The Silent Surrender
HAVANA TIMES – I’m living through a time that some find fascinating. The advance of artificial intelligence is transforming our lives at breakneck speed, and that frightens me.
My dad always said I was someone who “looks for a fifth leg on a cat” (makes things more complicated than they are), but when the most complex tasks are solved in seconds, when there are algorithms that anticipate our desires, and machines that can write, speak, or create images that seem to come straight from human ingenuity—then it’s time to pause and reflect. The more “intuitive” technology becomes, the more people’s spirits seem to be lulled to sleep.
Since I was a child, I’ve watched science fiction movies warning about something even more disturbing than the threat of autonomous Artificial Intelligence: the voluntary surrender of humanity. Machines don’t have to destroy us like in the movies—it’s enough that they make life easier, sparing us the effort of thinking, doubting, or choosing.
Idiocracy, for example, is a dystopian comedy directed by Mike Judge in 2006 in which an average man is frozen and wakes up five hundred years in the future. The film doesn’t show a technological rebellion like so many others, but rather an intellectual decline in a society where no one reflects, contradicts, or remembers—everything is easy and comfortable. In that void disguised as peace, what is human fades away.
We’re already seeing the symptoms worldwide, but in Cuba, they’re showing at an alarming scale. Even though all technologies have arrived late to the island since 1959, Cubans have run a marathon not to fall behind.
Shallow analysis, loss of language—from being unable to hold a conversation without distractions to writing “hola” like the “olas” (waves) of the sea. Young people go out partying and, to the rhythm of “tacto, que llegó el reparto,” dance with their heads buried in their phones. Simple math is solved with a calculator, conversations revolve around clothes bought on Shein or celebrity gossip, and schoolwork is completed with help from the AI app Luzia.
Being surrounded by technology that offers immediate answers is convenient—there’s no need to question anything when everything is just one click away. The issue is that it’s stealing from us the habit of asking questions, of researching, of forming our own opinions.
Artificial Intelligence won’t control us by force—it will conquer us through omission. And we Cubans, already conditioned to all kinds of manipulation, will be the first to become dependent. We’ll be so anesthetized that we’ll hand over the helm of our lives. Although, come to think of it, we’ve already been numb for 66 years—and not under the yoke of AI.
A small but powerful elite has placed its pieces on the board and understands what’s at stake. They master the language of code, the flows of data, the invisible infrastructures that shape our decisions while moving us like pawns without us noticing.
We cannot be naive—Artificial Intelligence is not neutral. It is a subtle weapon, and over time, it will become the new scepter of global power.
Meanwhile, most of us will stay distracted, believing we’re in control of our lives. But if we don’t think, create, and feel—what freedom do we really have left?
Perhaps not all is lost. We can choose our humanity. We can create new trenches in art, philosophy, literature. Think for ourselves, stay alert, and look beyond the screen.
AI will grow more powerful every day—that’s a fact. The question is what we’ll do when that future arrives. I believe there’s still time, and for now, that choice is still ours.
Fabiana, I share your sentiments and fears. I live in the western world where the pace of AI is dizzying. Everything can already be done by machines and AI – from advanced manufacturing to customer service, to even law and healthcare. It seems that humans are replacing ourselves and fewer and fewer humans are needed for jobs. The technocrats reap the rewards of course, but it is the average citizen, and society, that suffers the consequences of technology and profit over people. The rich are getting richer while the middle class is being wiped-out, destined to increase the demographic at the bottom of the pyramid – the poor. I have no faith that the world will be a better place than it was in the past. I dream of just living the rest of my days on a tropical island where I can unplug from the world and grow my own fruits and vegetable, and fish the sea for meat. A life that at my choosing I could peek into the chaos of the world, then to quickly exit again into the sounds of the wind rustling in the palms trees, the birds singing in the skies, and the sea crashing on the shoreline.