At the end of the 60-second spot one thing is clear: Copilot, the artificial intelligence service designed by Microsoft, is very good and very efficient. In this advertisement, which aired during the Superbowl, America’s media event, the message conveyed to millions and millions of viewers by Bill Gates’ company was the following: don’t worry if you get everything wrong and if, relying only on your talents and commitment, you would be doomed to failure; However, artificial intelligence can guarantee you success. Just provide her with some data and she will take care of getting you through exams, making a film, opening a business or learning something despite your age: whether you are young or old, she will work for you, work hard for you, get the results and then he will give them to you, so that you can enjoy them as if you had earned everything with your own efforts. And this step, ultimately, is a shame: why make the effort to enjoy the (un)achieved success? Why can’t you enjoy the software for us? Because the fictitious attraction of success, the mantra of our era, is needed to cloud (real) intelligences and reduce them to what Immanuel Kant, someone who was not afraid to sweat, would have called the “state of minority”. Minority, the philosopher explained in What is Enlightenment?, is “the inability to use one’s own intelligence without the guidance of another”. But this minority is “guilty” if it is caused not by a defect in our brain, but rather “by the lack of decision and courage” to use it without being guided by others. Enlightenment is precisely the exit from this state of minority of which we are guilty, due to laziness, conformism, fearfulness… How can it be remedied? Kant’s response: «Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence.” Just don’t ask Copilot how to use it, or where to find it…
PS It is typical of dictatorships to present the state of minority as something positive and desirable. Because, in fact, it is for power.