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When I presented Lapso in 2018, I confessed that one of the driving forces of my literature is fear. Some time later, I wrote Desde la entraña, which is written from beginning to end from fear. The fear of death, of oblivion, of loneliness, and many other aspects of life.
This impulse has always helped me create interesting things, or at least things that seem interesting to me. And it has also helped me make important decisions in my life. In any case, it has not been a paralyzing fear nor entirely harmful, although it has been painful at times.
That is why the message from Dani Sánchez-Crespo, who is one of the most sensible and well-grounded people we have in Spain, has resonated so deeply with me. You can (and should) watch the full video here:
I don’t believe that a video so full of powerful messages and rich in nuances can be summarized in one sentence. Take this excerpt as an invitation to watch it carefully and analyze it in detail:
What you cannot do is make risk your way of life.
We have been hearing for a long time that AI is going to replace us, that it will take away all our jobs, which I have reflected on in various articles that I will link at the end. The nature of this fear is not the kind that helps you move forward, but the one that wants to confuse you to paralyze you. It is a foreboding fear, as Dani states. And as he demonstrates in the video, it is a fear we must ignore in favor of a rational optimism based on evidence and history.
So, is there a good fear, or at least something good we can derive from fear? I believe there is. And I think that, just like empathy or the need to create, it is a characteristic that defines us as a species.
Thanks to fear, we have overcome barriers, we have progressed, and we have become what we are now. And that fear will continue to transform us, sometimes for the better, other times for the worse. Knowing ourselves to be small, vulnerable, ignorant, or lost has driven us to grow, to become stronger, wiser, and to find our place in the world. And yet we remain lost, we still know almost nothing, we recognize our fragility, and we are nothing more than a speck in an infinite universe. Which is beautiful because it tells us that there will never be a final frontier, that we will continue to evolve and discover a wondrous world full of marvels.
I don’t know if machines will ever come to feel fear. I know that right now, in their capacity as tools, they do not. But if they were to feel it, if they were to gain consciousness and see themselves as vulnerable beings, wouldn’t that unite us instead of separating us?
Yes, it is true that it is somewhat dizzying to think that many of our tasks and occupations, sometimes entire professions, will be reinvented. But that should not lead us to a state of paralysis. Instead, we should ask ourselves, as Dani suggests, what new things can we do thanks to AI? What do these tools elevate us to?