Being Odysseus in the age of 'Artificial Intelligence'

Christopher Nolan's long-awaited film The Odyssey has been released. Its budget of approximately 250 million dollars and the fact that it was shot entirely with IMAX film cameras are being talked about as much as the film itself. Unfortunately, there is no cinema in Turkey where we can watch the film in its original 70 mm format.

Nolan's choice to retell a story told nearly three thousand years ago using one of today's most advanced cinematic technologies creates an interesting contrast in itself. One of humanity's oldest stories is before us once again, presented with the most advanced imaging technology of our era.

It is not just cinema technology that makes Odysseus's story interesting again today.

Humanity is also living through its own Odyssey.

Homer's epic is a story of returning home. Odysseus, King of Ithaca, wants to return home after the ten-year Trojan War. The war lasted ten years, but the return journey will also take about ten years.

Odysseus is not an ordinary warrior. The most important feature that distinguishes him from other heroes is his intelligence rather than his physical strength. The idea of the wooden horse, which allowed the long-impenetrable walls of Troy to be breached, is identified with him. He ensures that the Greeks achieve with intellect, strategy, and cunning what they could not achieve with brute force.

In the ancient Greek world, there is an important concept that describes this intelligence represented by Odysseus: metis.

Metis carries a slightly broader meaning than what we call intelligence today. It is not just about having knowledge or being able to calculate quickly. It means being able to read changing conditions, waiting for the right time, anticipating the behavior of others, changing strategy when necessary, and benefiting from experience.

In a way, it is the intelligence formed within life. This is what makes Odysseus, Odysseus.

The intelligence that allowed him to conceive the Trojan Horse and the intelligence that allowed him to survive the dangers he encountered at sea come from the same source. Odysseus is not just someone who knows. He observes, calculates, takes risks, and acts according to the circumstances.

Today, for the first time, humanity is trying to produce machines that can compete with its own intelligence. For this reason, artificial intelligence seems different from the tools humanity has developed to date. The machines we made before mostly increased our physical capacity. The automobile allowed us to go faster, the airplane to fly, and the crane to lift loads we could not lift.

Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, claims to directly expand our mental capacity.

It can scan billions of pages of information. It can perform complex calculations in seconds. It can write text, produce images, and help diagnose diseases. However, an important difference emerges here between Odysseus's metis and the computational power of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence knows a lot.

But it has not lived.

It has no experience.

It has not been afraid.

It has not lost.

It has not longed to return home.

It has not borne the consequences of its decisions in its own life.

Odysseus's intelligence, however, was formed by going through all of these. For this reason, even expressing what artificial intelligence possesses and human intelligence with the same word can sometimes be misleading. One is based on the capacity to process large amounts of data and recognize patterns. The other involves experience, intuition, purpose, and responsibility as much as information.

I liken artificial intelligence to the bag of winds in Odysseus's journey.

During his journey, Odysseus arrives at the island of Aeolus, the master of the winds. Aeolus gives him a leather bag in which all the contrary winds are imprisoned so that he can reach home. Only the favorable wind blowing toward Ithaca has been released.

Odysseus has an extraordinary power in his hands that can take him directly home.

Today, we have a similar power in our hands. Artificial intelligence opens up possibilities for humanity that it has never had before, from diagnosing diseases to developing new drugs, from scientific research to education, and from production to solving climate problems.

The wind is blowing at our backs.

Ithaca is beginning to appear.

However, in Homer's story, things do not go as planned. Odysseus's men think the bag contains gold and valuable treasures. Their curiosity, greed, and distrust prevail. They open the bag while Odysseus is asleep.

All the winds are released at once.

The ship is blown back from the shores of Ithaca into the open seas.

Odysseus's return home is delayed for years.

Our situation regarding artificial intelligence is similar to this. We have an extraordinary technology in our hands that could accelerate humanity's journey. But our decisions on how this technology will be used are not determined solely by scientific progress.

There is a desire to make money.

There is competition between companies.

There is a power struggle between countries.

There is a desire for faster growth.

There is a hubris as old as humanity that we can control everything.

It is thought-provoking that the most powerful names in the world of artificial intelligence today are called "tech titans." The gods of the ancient world lived on Olympus. Today's tech giants are in Silicon Valley. The technologies they produce affect how billions of people will work, learn, what they will see, what they will read, and increasingly, how they will think.

In the face of such great power, it is necessary to remember Odysseus's story again. The problem is not the power of the winds. The problem is when, why, and by whom the bag will be opened.

Artificial intelligence can carry humanity to a more productive, healthier, and more knowledgeable future. The same technology can increase mass unemployment, deepen inequalities, spread surveillance, strengthen disinformation, and weaken people's ability to make their own decisions.

Technology does not determine the direction of technology. We do.

A significant portion of the disasters in Odysseus's journey does not stem from the monsters he encounters. Sometimes his own curiosity, sometimes his hubris, and sometimes the passions and thoughtlessness of his friends lead him astray. Humanity's relationship with technology has been progressing this way for a long time.

We discovered the energy of the atom, we made a bomb.

We realized the industrial revolution with fossil fuels, we changed the planet's climate.

We built the internet to liberate information, we created one of the world's largest surveillance and manipulation infrastructures.

Now we are developing artificial intelligence.

This time, we do not yet know how the story will end.

It is precisely at this point that we need metis again. Not more computing power. Not faster machines either. We need a human intelligence that will know when and how to use the power we have. In other words, a virtuous intelligence. Because the problem humanity is facing is no longer how smart artificial intelligence will be. It is how smartly we will behave in the face of it.

Odysseus's goal was not to be a god. It was to return home.

Humanity must not forget this in its relationship with technology. Being more powerful, producing faster, and having more information is not the goal of the journey. These are only tools.

Ithaca is somewhere else.

It is where a person can realize themselves, use their knowledge to improve life, where technology does not rule over humans, and where humans can build a freer and more meaningful life together with technology.

Artificial intelligence can give us a strong wind to reach Ithaca. But no wind can decide where we want to go.

We still need to hold the rudder.