I've just returned from a series of experiences that shook my head and my heart. It was 15 days between the Web Summit Lisbon, where I gave a talk on the Creative stage, followed by another week immersed in the world of contemporary art at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, which this year featured, for the first time, a Brazilian curator, Adriano Pedrosa.

Both events share the common thread of being the largest platforms for discussion and appreciation in their respective fields. At the first, more than 70,000 people from around the world shared the cutting edge of innovation and technology, where, naturally, the main protagonist was the exponential evolution of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. In the second event, more than 300 artists from around the world spread throughout the Giardini and Arsenale, specific areas of the Biennale, but also across various other hotspots in the city, presenting paintings, sculptures, installations, and other forms of expression of the NATURAL INTELLIGENCES that art (still) represents.

It's difficult to imagine a greater contrast between the stimuli, reflections, and sensations in the two events, but that's exactly where the insight to write this article arose. In fact, I realized that in my own lecture I was already addressing the tension between these two worlds, when I provoked thought about the risks of the atrophy of some of our structuring and ancestral competencies, such as imagination and intuition, due to the delegation of many of our demands to AIs. Because the brain is obsessed with economy, what it understands we are no longer using, it redirects energy elsewhere. For example, the ability we had to remember phone numbers, which we lost when we outsourced this task to cell phones. In Venice, imagination and intuition seemed to overflow, almost as if in a "reserve" where these magical abilities that differentiate us from all other species were protected from the voracious appetite of technology. At least that was my initial impression during the first two days of the Biennale. But there was another very interesting connection.

The theme of this edition was "Foreigners Everywhere," in which artists, mostly on the margins of museum and gallery circuits, presented their worldview. The forcefulness of the colonized, exploited, refugee, and expatriate perspective was everywhere. For example, in the work of Aydeé Rodríguez López, an artist who defines himself as Afro-Mexican, who portrays the reality on cotton plantations, where African slaves are exploited by Mexicans and colonized by Spaniards.

From this work, I began to realize that some of the most compelling speeches I heard at the Web Summit had a possible deep connection to what was on display at the Biennial.

Human history is marked by power dynamics in which superior technologies played a decisive role. From the mastery of fire, through agriculture, or the development of means of communication, those who possessed the technology controlled the destiny of those who did not. This dynamic, which resulted in the subjugation of entire peoples, manifested in many of the works exhibited at the Biennial, could offer us a warning about the challenges of the present, especially in the face of the exponential advancement of artificial general intelligence.

In one of the most impactful conversations at the Web Summit, Max Tegmark, physicist and researcher at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), aligns himself with many other AI experts and highlights the immeasurable risks of a potentially uncontrolled AGI with capabilities far superior to our cognitive capacity.

I realized that he was referring to this “entity” (with a possible IQ of 5000, when Albert Einstein’s was 160) as an oppressive force.
A potential contemporary colonizer? And we, primitive Sapiens, colonized?

The Aztecs and the Fascination with Cortés
In 1519, Montezuma and the Aztecs faced Hernán Cortés, a Spanish conquistador who, despite representing an obvious threat, was received with reverence. The fascination with the “other,” fueled by the perception of divine power and promises of change, paved the way for the destruction of the great and powerful Aztec empire. Cortés won not only through the technological superiority of his weapons or the introduction of diseases, but also by exploiting internal divisions and manipulating the cultural enchantment that surrounded him.
This historical tragedy, like many others, reveals how underestimating risks can be fatal. Despite sensing the danger, the Aztecs contributed, perhaps hypnotized, to the consolidation of Cortés' power. This fascination, difficult to explain, echoes in modern dynamics, such as the relationship with authoritarian leaders or with new technologies that promise to transform the world, such as AIs.
In Venice, faced with so many works that portrayed oppressed people in various cultures, in Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East, I realized how we may be repeating historical mistakes, underestimating forces that we do not control.

In the vast majority of speeches at the Web Summit, the enchantment with AIs made me imagine the powerful Aztecs enchanted by that red-haired warrior who magically floated in a spaceship before their incredulous eyes.

Art has always anticipated reality. Poetry foresees what science will discover. Perhaps, more than ever, we need to broaden our connection with this form of expression of the human spirit. Perhaps it can protect us from ourselves, this strange species that we are, which seems to oscillate between brilliance and barbarity, between revolutionary lucidity and shortsighted stupidity.

But, for that, we need to cultivate our deepest and most ancestral skills, those that make us unique: our intuition, our sensitivity, our spirituality, because only in this way will we increase the chances of using all this incredible technology that is materializing exponentially before our eyes, in our favor and in favor of our blue planet. And not the other way around.