It is the week leading to Christmas. I’m at the airport waiting for someone to arrive and as I observe what’s happening here, I can’t help myself thinking about the place we have allowed digital technology to take in our lives. In 2022, AI pervades decision-making in all areas of human experience. What this means is that the deepest qualitative dimensions of being alive on this planet are being reduced to computer data, those data are then fed to algorithms designed by computer scientists which have become the ultimate decision-makers in how life is lived on planet earth.

My contention is that the blind faith that we, the “moderns”, have in algorithms and what we call AI (often without really knowing what that means) is misplaced. There is a place for algorithmic decision-making, but the we need to learn to value the qualitative, embodied, experiential dimension of being alive in a human body, with a human mind.

To understand why AI cannot rule the world, go to the arrival level of an airport at Christmas time, and observe. See the reunion between people who love each other, who have missed each other, the smiles on their faces, the tears of joy of finding each other after several weeks, or months or even years of absence, the excitement, the laughter, the warm hugs… And you will realise why the cold logic of AI can’t cover the reality of the experience of being human, of life.

I have little patience for those who profess that the laws of pure logic rule the social and that we can sort everything out with cold data. What about the rich warm relational dimension of being human? Those people go around claiming that logic and science are all we need, but the irony is that they fail to see that they are surrounded by networks of other persons who provide love, care and warm attention.