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Liberating Intelligence. Breaking Away from Domination Societies – Towards New Creative Democracies

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Liberating Intelligence. Breaking Away from Domination Societies – Towards New Creative Democracies ARS BREVIS 2019 LIBERATING INTELLIGENCE LIBERATING INTELLIGENCE. BREAKING AWAY FROM DOMINATION SOCIETIES – TOWARDS NEW CREATIVE DEMOCRACIES JAUME AGUSTÍ-CULLELL Researcher in artificial and human intelligence ABSTRACT: I invite you to plunge into a cultural and humanistic ap- proach to creative intelligence. This article focuses on the most power- ful dimension of creative intelligence, which I refer to as liberating intel- ligence. My primary aim is to highlight the need for humanity to reach a healthy, mature and harmonious creative intelligence, paying special attention to its liberating dimension. That this is our main challenge today and the key to break away from domination and exploitation societies - toward truly democratic societies, the social embodiment of creative intelligence, which I refer to as creative democracies. KEYWORDS: freedom, intelligence, creativity, democracy. Intel·ligència alliberadora. Desenvolupament de les societats de domini cap a noves democràcies creatives 29 RESUM: Os convido a capbussar-vos en una aproximació cultural i humanística a la intel·ligència creativa. Aquest article es focalitza en la dimensió més poderosa de la intel·ligència creativa, a la que em referi- ré amb el nom d’intel·ligència alliberadora. L’objectiu principal és res- saltar la necessitat que te la humanitat d’assolir una intel·ligència creativa, saludable, madura i harmoniosa, centrada en la seva dimensió alliberadora. Aquest el gran repte actual i, la clau per posar fi a les so- cietats de domini i explotació - per anar cap a societats verament de- mocràtiques, l’acompliment social de la intel·ligència creativa, a les quals anomeno democràcies creatives. PARAULES CLAU: llibertat, intel·ligència, creativitat, democràcia. Understanding the ways of creative intelligence In order to orient ourselves and navigate successfully the sea of complexities, continuous change and uncertainties of the current world, avoiding its dangers (such as the social impact of biotechnol- ogy or innovations in artificial intelligence) we need to go back to their original simplicity, their initial creative point. In other words, the fact that this world is based on a fundamental creative power we all share: human intelligence; i.e. what makes us human. I invite Ars_Brevis_25.indd 29 29/5/20 9:53 JAUME AGUSTÍ-CULLELL ARS BREVIS 2019 you to plunge into a cultural and humanistic approach to creative intelligence. A collective intelligence - communicative and symbi- otic - whose growth and decline depends mainly on cultural factors. Unlike most animals, our biology is insufficient for survival. Instead, we inherit, from birth, a power that makes us humans: a communi- cative and symbiotic or cultural intelligence to learn and create nearly everything we need to live. This article focuses on the most powerful dimension of creative intelligence, which I refer to as “lib- erating intelligence”. It is the intelligence that enables us to go be- yond existing concepts and models (created by other forms of intel- ligence), to thus enjoy direct access to the present reality and to live in freedom, love and truth. My primary aim is to highlight the need for humanity to achieve a healthy, mature and harmonious creative intelligence, paying special attention to its liberating dimension. This is our main challenge today and the key to breaking away from domination and exploitation societies - toward truly democratic societies, which I refer to as creative democracies. This is the pro- posal that can be found in the homoquaerens.info blog. Creative democracies are the social embodiment of creative intel- ligence. A well-developed creative intelligence constitutes the basic 30 power of the people – and the key to building non-violent societies. Economic and political elites are proving powerless to confront the complexities and uncertainties of today’s world – as illustrated by climate change. To address them we need the constant democratic intervention of creative intelligence. For the first time in history, it is becoming clear that only creative democracies can tackle the issues surrounding the survival and wellbeing of life on earth. Creative democracies would allow us to improve the social benefits – and avoid the risks and perils - of the accelerating and exponential growth of technosciences (the interaction between the sciences and tech- nologies), as well as of their products and services. In order to guide technoscientific growth and its accelerated dy- namics, we cannot only rely on past-accumulated experience and reasoning. The creation of meaning by means of narratives, human- istic ideologies, fixed ethical values, plans, norms, laws, rights and duties; i.e. what has guided action in the past, may still be necessary but is insufficient because these instruments cannot be dynamic enough to handle continuous change. The power of prediction and control of social phenomena by means of social, political and eco- nomic theories is progressively showing its limitations in addressing the challenges of our very dynamic and complex societies. This also applies to our daily lives, which are also increasingly dynamic and Ars_Brevis_25.indd 30 29/5/20 9:53 ARS BREVIS 2019 LIBERATING INTELLIGENCE demand the detached freshness of creative intelligence. Have you realised, in your daily actions, such as building your life together with your partner, that established opinions, judgements and pat- terns of thought that had been useful in the past can no longer help (or may even get in the way) when addressing new situations and challenges? So what do we do? We have to continually recreate meaning; i.e. what are the needs and what is important in our society, which is ever-changing as a result of the explosive growth in technosciences. This is the main task of collective free creative intelligence, which is not attached to past patterns of thought but is instead always fresh-acting in the present, and deploying spontaneous creativity to tackle the unknown, confronting challenges as they come rather than procrastinating. That’s why it is so important to understand the ways of creative intelligence, the true power that we, as humans, have from birth. Cultivating this intelligence requires a minimum of decent living conditions for all - with social justice to break away from the vicious circle of economic and intellectual poverty - as well as permanent access to education. Before further fleshing out the potential of creative and liberating intelligence, a brief warning. When we try to talk about the original 31 simplicity and creativity of intelligence, words are limited and can let us down. They are mere symbols, pointers that can only hope to stimulate our attention and interest, provoke further research and move us towards insight. And what is insight? The direct per- ception of the facts and the spontaneous realisations to which such perception can give rise. These pages aspire to awaken the insight that creative collective human intelligence, in particular its libera- tion dimensions, needs to become the centrepiece of our social endeavours. On a more specific note, let me share how this insight struck me. A personal discovery of intelligence and freedom When I was eight years old, enthused after reading a brief biography of Edison, and while going to school in the rain, I tried to invent something to keep me dry. After a long period of pondering, it dawned upon me that the best possible invention already existed: the very umbrella I carried – simple yet effective. I may not have invented anything but I began to experience the pleasure of look- ing at everything as a creation of intelligence. Since then I have become more interested in questions than in answers, first subcon- Ars_Brevis_25.indd 31 29/5/20 9:53 JAUME AGUSTÍ-CULLELL ARS BREVIS 2019 sciously and later actively, in understanding the creative powers of intelligence more than its creations, such as knowledge and its ap- plications, as well of all kinds of social institutions, the social fabric. I discovered that my primary interest was not in knowledge or ex- planatory theories but in their foundation or origin. Furthermore, I began discovering the research capacity of intelligence, not only specialised but generalised research, present in every action. Much later I realised that this very attitude of generalised research is neces- sary in order for everybody to be able to live fully in today’s world. With the same excitement, two decades later, in the mid-1980s, I found myself spearheading the development of an artificial intel- ligence institute, in which I became a researcher for the next 30 years. At the time, artificial intelligence was undergoing a period of great euphoria, so much so that it alarmed me how much a future of intelligent machines was being sold. Wild claims generating hype in order to either impress potential investors or sell products for the highest profit possible were flying left and right. I was embar- rassed at how the mere labelling of machines as “intelligent” could devaluate human intelligence, being compared as a mere number against the computational power of machines. What alarmed me 32 even more is what they predicted would come to pass: humanity would become enslaved by those controlling these machines. Thus, besides my work on artificial intelligence, I felt the need to under- stand human intelligence with its sensitive and elaborate mental perception of reality as a whole, such a necessary attribute in our global world. I began to consider “artificial intelligence” as a meta- phor for a restricted instrumental form of functional intelligence; that is, as computational intelligence inspired by and serving human intelligence. Once an observed intelligent behaviour has been precisely understood and dissected, such as reasoned learning, an artificial intelligence researcher can attempt to develop algorithms to imitate it. This is a possibility worth exploiting and researching thoroughly to extend its ability in a form of beneficial symbiosis with human intelligence. However, we should be aware that human intelligence is so much more than the computation of various sorts of intelligent behaviours and knowledge in any automaton.
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