From the series Artificial intelligence
One of the most penetrating reflections on the anthropological question linked to artificial intelligence (AI) was put forward by Henry Kissinger. In his view, AI and communication through digital networks – the web – undermine the principle of reality defined by the Enlightenment in two ways: the web tends to fragment our perception of reality, being based on algorithms that tailor information to individuals in order to cater to their preferences; secondly, perceptions of reality are mediated by a mechanism – the probabilistic filtering of a volume of data far beyond the capacity of the human mind – whose internal workings cannot be reconstructed through rational analysis.
The web fragments perceptions of reality, tailoring it to individuals according to the tenets of mass individualism. The web, combined with AI, creates an opaque mediation between individuals and reality, i.e., a mediation whose logical and conceptual connections are unknown because they either do not exist or are unknowable.
Before delving into a thesis so challenging for the theory of knowledge, it is essential to understand how, right from the outset in the 1950s, Kissinger's focus was on scrutinising the decision-making capacity of the political elites and the relationship between political decision-making and war.
A 1959 interview with Kissinger can be linked to Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders. We are familiar with this work through Arrigo Cervetto's essay, also published in 1959 in Prometeo: a text that foreshadowed our Marxist analysis of television democracy. Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower's use of advertising techniques – "I like Ike" – had been the subject of Democratic criticism levelled against the Republicans, although in 1960 it was John Fitzgerald Kennedy who went on to defeat Richard Nixon in one of the first televised debates.
Kissinger wrote that a political leader must have the courage not to seek immediate success:
"The democratic game cannot be limited to exercises in dexterity or tests of cunning based on Gallup polls: otherwise it ends up being reduced to tricks for demagogically mobilising the forces of public opinion, which soon leads to Caesarism"
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In that same context, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, published in 1957 for the CFR, is an almost pedagogical attempt to introduce into the American debate – for which the concepts of European political culture were so alien – the notion of war as "the continuation of politics by other means", drawing, amongst other things, on Lenin's notes on Carl von Clausewitz's theory.
In the 1970s, reflecting on his experience at the helm of American foreign policy in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger noted in his memoirs – White House Years – the transformation in diplomacy brought about by the advent of teletype machines:
"Before the era of instantaneous communication, instructions to a negotiator had to be conceptual and therefore they gave an insight into the thinking of statesmen; in the age of the teletype they are usually tactical or technical and therefore are silent about larger purposes and premises"
. This gave free rein to the State Department's ambition of directing every single step in minute detail. It was an illusion of centralisation that, in reality, through a process of bureaucratisation, lost any grasp of the underlying strategic lines, the shaping of public opinion, and the very formation and selection of the American diplomatic personnel that should have flown from those guiding principles.
During the 1980s and 1990s, attention shifted to the irruption of the pace and spectacularisation of television into foreign policy decision-making: in-depth reading and the conceptual thinking fostered by the written word were overshadowed by the emotive use of images and the uninterrupted flow of information, which demanded a response in real time.
At the start of the new century, the issue broadened to the use of computers and the first wave of information via the Internet. The mass of information available, writes Kissinger in Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, begins "to exceed the capacity to evaluate it". Previous generations could not even imagine the sheer volume of information available via computers and the web, let alone the possibility of accessing it almost automatically via a keyboard. The impact of the "communications revolution" was comparable only to "the invention of printing", but, according to Kissinger, the question was whether this might ultimately "inhibit" the capacity for learning in the field of international relations.
While the technological revolution offers extraordinary tools for organising information, "the successful conduct of foreign policy demands, above all, the intuitive ability to sense the future" trends, thereby enabling one to influence their development. However, "the study of history and philosophy, the disciplines most relevant to perfecting the art of statesmanship" is neglected everywhere or is given "utilitarian interpretations"; leaders ultimately rise to prominence "by exploiting and manipulating the mood of the moment".
In Kissinger's view, the inherent strategic infirmity of television and digital politics, and the fragility of the political elites formed by them, are the premise for reflecting on artificial intelligence.