The Children of the Computer Age Are Afraid of Artificial Intelligence

We are the generation that grew up alongside computers.

We watched gaming systems gradually enter our homes, television occupy more and more of our lives, and the Internet transform the way we communicate. We spent entire afternoons in front of a Commodore 64, a ZX Spectrum, an Amiga, an Atari or a console, while adults lectured us every blessed day that we would be better off reading a book than staring at those infernal machines.

Their recurring theory was that technology would alienate us from the world, extinguish our imagination, damage our relationships with other children and turn our brains into something lazy and passive. Video games and anime would make us violent, television would leave us unable to imagine, and computers would make us increasingly lonely and detached from reality.

It did not quite turn out that way.

For many of us, video games became a way to explore worlds, solve problems, learn foreign words, share experiences and build friendships. Computers did not suffocate our curiosity. More often than not, they fed it.

And yet today, when confronted with artificial intelligence, part of that same generation seems to have adopted the role of the judgemental adults it once criticised.

This new technology is treated as an absolute threat. We no longer judge what a person has created, how they used the tool or what they were trying to achieve. The mere whiff of AI is enough for any piece of work to lose its value automatically.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves an uncomfortable question: have we become the very adults who once failed to understand us?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke

Is Technology Always Good?

Artificial intelligence should not be acquitted unconditionally.

It is an immensely powerful tool and, precisely for that reason, it can also be extremely dangerous. It can support scientific research, improve accessibility and accelerate tasks that once required weeks or months. It can also be used for fraud, manipulation, disinformation, surveillance and the production of harmful content.

We cannot ignore the questions surrounding copyright, the use of data, the concentration of power in the hands of a few companies and the consequences for employment. We need rules, transparency and responsibility.

But using artificial intelligence to design a weapon is not the same as using it to organise an article about classic video games.

A car can take somebody to hospital or be used to run them over. A calculator can speed up a complex calculation, but owning one does not automatically turn somebody into a mathematician.

The power of a tool does not determine the value or morality of its purpose. Before putting it on trial, we should try to understand who is using it, how and why they are doing so, and where they are trying to go.

“Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”
Melvin Kranzberg

An Amplifier, Not Expertise

A scientific calculator used only to work out two plus two remains a powerful tool employed for an elementary operation.

Owning one is not enough to solve a problem in advanced physics. You need to understand the formulas, grasp the problem and know which route to follow. The calculator can accelerate the process, but it cannot give meaning to formulas you do not understand.

Something similar happens with artificial intelligence.

It can produce text, generate an image, suggest code or connect large quantities of information. But someone without a vision or a project does not suddenly become creative. Someone who knows nothing about a subject can be deceived by a formally convincing answer and publish complete nonsense without even realising it.

Artificial intelligence is an amplifier. If the original signal is weak, it merely amplifies the noise.

To use it well, you need to know what to ask, recognise when it has given you a wrong answer, verify the information, remove the obvious material and correct its course. You need to reread, choose, discard and accept responsibility for the result.

Most importantly, you need to understand what you have just read. These days, that is far from guaranteed.

AI can be the builder who puts up the walls, but somebody still has to design the building. Without an architect, a vision and solid underlying knowledge, a structure may look convincing from the outside while remaining dangerously fragile within.

A good executor does not automatically become a designer.

Knowledge Does Not Begin at Year Zero

There is another recurring accusation: artificial intelligence draws on knowledge and works produced by human beings.

It is a legitimate concern, particularly when questions of consent, attribution and the commercial use of other people’s work are involved. It cannot simply be dismissed with a joke.

At the same time, no human being constructs knowledge from nothing.

We speak languages we did not invent. We use formulas discovered before we were born. We read texts written centuries ago, learn from teachers who learned from other teachers, and develop ideas through knowledge accumulated over time.

If every individual had to rediscover everything alone, every birth would reset humanity to year zero.

A historian does not invent a new civilisation each time they begin a study. They consult sources, research and testimony, then select, interpret and organise them through their own judgement and sensibility. A musician does not reinvent notes and chords. A writer uses words, narrative structures and forms that belong to a shared culture.

This does not mean plagiarism does not exist, or that every use of somebody else’s work is acceptable. Quoting Shakespeare or using Einstein’s theories does not allow us to claim authorship of them.

It means recognising that human culture has always been built by accumulating, reworking and passing on knowledge.

Artificial intelligence accelerates this process enormously. That is precisely why it must be controlled, regulated and used critically. But accusing it simply of drawing on what already exists means forgetting that we do not create from nothing either.

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Isaac Newton

The Library and the Doctor

A friend of mine is a retired doctor. He is an extraordinarily cultured person, passionate about ancient history and literature, and even earned another degree after turning seventy. A brilliant mind.

Given his education and sensibility, I expected him to be somewhat suspicious of artificial intelligence. Instead, he told me how these tools are already changing the way medical research can be searched, compared and cross-referenced.

His wife, sadly, is undergoing treatment for cancer, and one particular therapy was causing severe side effects. Thanks to his expertise, his continued study and the ability to compare a large amount of information more quickly, he was able to investigate certain aspects of the treatment and assess possible options more carefully before discussing them with the doctors treating her. In their case, this opportunity for deeper research produced tangible benefits.

That does not mean artificial intelligence cured his wife.

It did not replace a doctor, and it did not turn an inexperienced person into a specialist. The result was possible because the person using it had decades of knowledge, experience and critical judgement.

AI opened the doors to an enormous library and placed many books on the table. But somebody was still needed to decide which ones to read, how to interpret them, which possibilities deserved further investigation and which should be discarded.

The more powerful the tool becomes, the more important the competence of the person using it.

“Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.”
Ben Parker, in Spider-Man, directed by Sam Raimi, 2002

When the Only Alternative Is Silence

Artificial intelligence is also lowering a barrier that is rarely discussed: the economic one.

Not everyone can afford a developer, a graphic designer, a translator, an editor, a consultant or an entire newsroom. That does not mean they have nothing worthwhile to say.

Imagine a talented writer who lacks the technical knowledge and financial resources needed to build a professional website or publish a book. They could use artificial intelligence to create a basic blog and give people the opportunity to read their work.

That website would probably be imperfect. Its design might be rough, its layout weak or its cover image unworthy of the material.

But the writer’s main purpose is not to prove that they are also an excellent web developer. It is to make their voice heard.

At that point, the reader’s discernment and openness become important. They can stop at the unattractive website and point a finger, or they can look beyond it and try to understand what that person has to say.

If the writer eventually found an audience and earned something through their work, they might become the future client of the very professional who, according to some people, had supposedly been replaced. They might finally hire a developer, a designer or an editor and improve what they had only been able to start alone.

In that case, artificial intelligence would not have taken a client away from a professional. It would have helped create a client who otherwise would never have existed.

The choice is often not between hiring a qualified person and replacing them with a machine. Sometimes the only genuine alternative is abandoning the project altogether.

AI cannot guarantee talent, success or quality. It can, however, allow more people to enter the room and attempt to make themselves heard.

The Crutch

For me, there is also a personal side to this.

I struggle with memory and attention. Sometimes I cannot immediately retrieve a word, a name or a connection that I know is somewhere in my mind. I may understand the meaning of a concept perfectly while being unable to find the precise term needed to express it. I may have a clear thought and struggle to organise it verbally. Writing is often my safe place.

This does not mean that I lack culture, ideas or the ability to reason. It means that an obstacle can sometimes stand between what I possess and what I am able to express at that particular moment.

I would be foolish not to acknowledge it.

Artificial intelligence helps me reduce that distance. It can remind me of a word, help me clarify a thought or recover an association that I had temporarily lost.

It did not give me that thought. It helped me bring it out.

For me, at certain moments, it can be the equivalent of a crutch.

A crutch does not choose the route, establish the destination or automatically turn the person using it into somebody better. It can support a generous person or a criminal. The human being still decides where to go and what to do upon arrival.

Seneca wrote: “No wind is favourable to one who does not know which port they are seeking.” Artificial intelligence can make the journey less difficult, but it does not choose the port.

Judging somebody merely because they use a crutch would be superficial. Before claiming that they could have travelled the same road without it, we should at least know whether that is true.

And yet, when we recognise, or believe we recognise, the involvement of artificial intelligence, we often stop asking where that person was trying to go.

We see the crutch and pass sentence.

The Cover Image on Trial

Artificial intelligence can generate an image, but that does not make it a professional designer. It can produce a text, but that does not automatically make it a writer.

A professional possesses experience, judgement, visual or literary sensibility, and skills developed through years of study and work. AI can perform some of the same functions, often with results that are less convincing and less coherent than those produced by a skilled person.

The perfect image or flawless text, however, is not always the real objective.

Sometimes an article exists to present an idea, recover a memory or begin a discussion. It may be only the fuse. The real explosion happens in the comments, when somebody recognises an experience, adds a personal detail or tells a fragment of history that no author could ever have known alone.

But somebody stops at the image, detects the presence of artificial intelligence and immediately turns that suspicion into an accusation. From that point onwards, the idea, the historical reconstruction and the experiences the text might have brought to the surface are no longer discussed. The tool is put on trial and everything else is ignored.

A strange metamorphosis then takes place. Not within the work, which retains the intentions and thoughts of the person who created it, but in the eyes of the observer.

After his transformation, Gregor Samsa continues to remember, worry and feel affection. Behind the new form, the same person remains. It is everyone around him who gradually stops looking for that person.

Something similar happens when the label of artificial intelligence is attached to a work or its author. That person does not suddenly lose their culture, ideas or sensibility. It is the observers who, having recognised a form that disturbs them, stop looking for what exists behind it.

At that point, the cover image no longer accompanies the article. It becomes the evidence used to convict it.

An image can certainly be criticised. It can be considered ugly, unsuitable or questionable. But judging a text merely because its cover was produced with AI is not very different from judging a book without opening it.

The accusation does not ignite the conversation. It becomes the hand that snuffs out the fuse before it can burn.

And in the end, we all lose.

Hey, I’m Here Too

Retro-Gamers began with an idea of mine, and I still run almost all of it alone.

I do not have the financial resources to pay for a newsroom, a graphic designer for every image, an always-available developer, a translator and all the other professionals a project like this would normally require.

Like many people, I have a job, a family and a limited number of hours to dedicate to what I love doing in my spare time.

And yet I felt the need to communicate, exchange ideas and return, after a difficult day, to that place in my memory where the afternoons spent in front of a computer or console still exist.

Without tools capable of providing practical support, Retro-Gamers would have been much smaller or collapsed under the amount of work required. I would have needed to find people willing to contribute without receiving anything in return, work around their understandably limited time or abandon important parts of the project.

I would have had to climb a mountain bare-handed.

Artificial intelligence did not come up with the idea for Retro-Gamers. It helped make it possible.

It did not live through my childhood, choose the direction of the project, build relationships with developers from gaming history or decide what kind of community to create. It was not AI that kept working when time was scarce, when I was exhausted, when my health got in the way or when certain accusations might have persuaded me to give up.

It helped me organise the work, overcome some technical limitations, put my thoughts in order and accelerate activities that would otherwise have required months or years.

I did not use it to replace a team I could have hired. I used it because I could not afford that team.

I would love Retro-Gamers to grow enough to involve more and more people, recognise their skills and, one day, reward their work in a meaningful way.

For that moment to arrive, however, the project first has to exist.

Artificial intelligence allowed me to say: “Hey, I’m here too.”

“Though we may sit forty years underground without speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk...”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

What a Home Is Worth

I do not know where Retro-Gamers will go. I do not have a crystal ball.

It may never become an activity capable of generating a genuine profit. Naturally, I would like it to support itself one day, allowing me to invest in the project and offer something tangible to those who collaborate with it.

But that is not how I measure its value.

If I manage to build a small community of enthusiasts who treat these pages as their own home, who return to read, write articles, leave comments and add personal memories to the stories of others, I will already have achieved almost everything I originally set out to do.

I will also have reached that point with the help of artificial intelligence. I have no reason to hide it, and I have no reason to be ashamed of it.

And I certainly do not need to justify myself.

Constructive criticism is essential to growth. A mistake must be corrected, an ugly image can be replaced and a weak text should be improved.

It is different when someone has no interest in discussing the content and merely hunts for the detail they can use to discredit it. I will not allow those people to decide the fate of the project.

I do not continue in order to convince those who have already decided that everything touched by artificial intelligence is worthless. I continue for those who actually read, those who share an experience, those who add something I did not know, and those who turn an article into a conversation richer than anything I could have created alone.

Are We Really Being Consistent?

We use technologies every day that have replaced tasks, jobs and habits from the past.

We communicate instantly with people on the other side of the world. We translate languages we do not speak. We follow satellite navigation instead of reading a map. We use software that corrects mistakes, automates calculations and simplifies activities once entrusted to other professionals.

As long as technology replaces somebody else’s labour or expertise, we often accept it without too much concern.

The problem seems to begin when it approaches our own profession, our identity or our small corner of the world.

Then it suddenly becomes immoral.

But what do we truly consider moral? Some of the loudest defenders of copyright grew up filling hard drives with MP3s downloaded from Napster, copied films, cracked software and collections of ROMs without asking too many questions.

That does not make every use of artificial intelligence legitimate, and one wrong does not excuse another. It does, however, reveal how selective our outrage can be. We become uncompromising when a technology threatens our work, yet far more flexible when it gives us something we want for free.

It is understandable to fear the economic and social consequences of such a profound transformation. But it is not consistent to defend only the technologies that do not step on our toes while demonising those that reach our own backyard.

Sometimes we see somebody achieve a better result with tools that are also available to us, and we prefer to attack the method rather than examine the result.

Is it really the tool that bothers us, or the fact that somebody else has learned to use it better?

Before You Break the Crutch

Artificial intelligence is not harmless, it is not infallible and it must not become an excuse for publishing false information, copying other people’s work or replacing human beings indiscriminately.

We must criticise it, regulate it and demand transparency.

But criticism and a witch hunt are not the same thing.

We grew up defending computers and video games from those who claimed they would destroy our imagination, our intelligence and our human relationships. Today we know that, for many of us, they also produced the opposite effect. They taught us to imagine entire worlds from a handful of pixels, solve problems, communicate and build.

Perhaps we should avoid repeating the same mistake made by the adults before us when faced with another technological revolution.

Artificial intelligence did not give me a thought or hand me Retro-Gamers complete and ready to publish. It helped me express the first and build the second.

Before accusing somebody because they used a crutch, we should at least ask where they were trying to go.

And perhaps read what they had to say before breaking it between their hands.

The greatest paradox is that, at times, I have found more willingness to listen in a tool than in certain people.

Not because artificial intelligence experiences emotions, genuinely understands our vulnerabilities or possesses consciousness. It does not. But it was built to work with language and with an enormous part of the knowledge accumulated by humanity. When we question it, it can help us bring order to a doubt, recognise a weakness or recover words that we could not find alone.

We, on the other hand, seem to be losing precisely that willingness. We accuse before understanding, judge before reading, retreat into our convictions and increasingly turn every discussion into a confrontation.

We are afraid that a machine might take something human away from us, while it is often we who surrender our capacity to listen, remain curious and change our minds.

“We think too much and feel too little.”
Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator

Artificial intelligence can reproduce the forms of empathy, but it cannot experience it. Yet if we have to turn to a tool incapable of feeling emotion in order to be heard, perhaps the real question is not how human the machine is becoming, but how much of our own humanity we are losing.

The cruelty growing within our conversations does not need to be simulated. It is real, and it belongs to us.

And sadly, there is nothing artificial about it.