Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1489264
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 JANUARY 2023 OPINION 5 IT was the year when the ef- fects of climate change were no longer a scientific theory but could be felt all over the world – from extraordinary flooding in Asia and extraordinary weather in Europe and the USA. It was the year when vaccines finally overcame the COVID threat in the developed world while others were left strand- ed for some time – except for China that insisted on its own drastic COVID policy that failed spectacularly and led to more COVID ravages across the country. It was the year that Russia launched a 'special military op- eration' which was probably in- tended to install a puppet gov- ernment in Ukraine – a move that ended up very miserably after it found itself waging a war against a Ukraine that is heavi- ly supported by Europe and the US. It was the year that mid-term elections in the US gave a beat- ing to Trump's MAGA (Make America Great Again) and the Republican Party that is out of the White House, favouring the Democrats despite having an insipid man as President. It was the year in which the toll of Brexit in Britain started to become heavier and clear- er with the fastest changes in Downing Street in history. It was the year of the beau- ty of football winning over the strange circumstances of the World Cup organised in Qatar during the winter months. It was the year that the La- bour Party won the election in Malta despite diminishing its votes, while the PN Opposition 'managed' to lose even more votes than Labour did. Sudden- ly, apparently out of nowhere, the abortion issue was pushed to the fore in Malta with some caught completely unawares on this moral and ethical issue. Quite an extraordinary year! As a recent leader in The Economist put it: "Judged by the liberal yardstick of limited gov- ernment, a respect for individu- al dignity and a faith in human progress, 2022 has been mixed." The follies of 2022 will soon be forgotten, even though many ef- fects of these follies will be with us for long. In his most recent book, 'Lead- ership', Henry Kissinger con- cludes with a deeply pessimistic assessment of the "age of image" in which we live. According to Kissinger, "Read- ing a complex book carefully and engaging with it critically, has become as counter-cultural as an act such as memorizing an epic poem in the earlier, print- based age." Kissinger concludes that we have given up complex thinking in exchange for learn- ing via omnipresent 'images'. In an increasingly secular age when people are abandoning organised religion in droves, our basic ethical reasoning should lead us to construct the moral consciousness that sup- ports the value judgment 'evil'. Western society calls Vladimir Putin an evil man. Even in a society that is rapidly losing shared moral standards, we should resort to ethics to know what is right or wrong. A moral judgment of the Rus- sian president seems to cry out from the facts of his decision to invade Ukraine. Massacres of civilians, kidnapping of children and rapes of women, missile at- tacks on power plants, hospi- tals, schools and other facilities intended to increase the suf- fering of innocents. These war crimes and others are so funda- mental to Russian war fighting that they must have been ap- proved, if not ordered, by Putin himself. Any fair observer must conclude that Putin is, simply put, a monster. As we stumble into 2023, sim- ilar judgments can be reached against the other dictators who join Putin in a quartet of foreign tyrants that many in the west consider as the greatest threats: Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian Supreme Leader Aya- tollah Ali Khamenei and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. But the ethical conundrum of moral judgements will al- ways be looming on Humanity's thinking. Humanity has driven itself into a tight corner but humanity will survive – at least for many more centuries, I reckon. The inven- tiveness and creativity of 'homo sapiens' have not reached their limits. The world population reached a staggering 8 billion during 2022, but the predicted impossibility of planet Earth supporting so many human be- ings became a possibility thanks to humanity's technological and scientific advances. Meanwhile the lure of power, sex and money – in whatever order – will keep on pushing humans beyond the pale, un- dermining aspects of the very life that has been supported and encouraged by human creativi- ty. That is the big contradiction of humanity – it continually risks undermining its own ex- istence only to be stopped in its steps by its own creativity. This will go on and on. The next step is artificial intel- ligence (AI) – the development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requir- ing human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech rec- ognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Currently, engineers and sci- entists are still trying to achieve full artificial intelligence, where computers can be considered to have the cognitive capacity equivalent to that of a human. But the future surely holds more. AI will be followed by Arti- ficial Super Intelligence (ASI) that goes beyond interpreting or understanding human be- haviour and intelligence. ASI machines will be self-aware and self-vigilant enough to surpass the capacity of human intelli- gence and conduct. With such super intelligence machines will be able to think of the possible abstractions and/or interpretations which are sim- ply impossible for humans to think. The human brain has a lim- it to its thinking ability which is constrained to some billion neurons. So man will be invent- ing machines with a capacity that surpasses the limit of the human brain! ASI would be exceedingly far, far better at everything or what- ever we do: in mathematics, science, arts, sports, medicine, marketing strategies, hobbies, emotional relationship, or in applying a precise human intel- lect to a particular problem. ASI would have a greater memory with a faster ability to process and analyse situations, data, and stimuli actions. Man has not been able to achieve this yet and we do not know what will happen if we achieve it. However, we can rest assured that the decision-making and problem-solving capabilities of super-intelligent machines would be far superior and more precise when compared to those of human beings. This concept has unknown conse- quences. What impact it will have on humanity, our survival, our very existence is just pure speculation. Meanwhile the years keep roll- ing on and on. But the ethical conundrum of moral judgements will al- ways be looming on humanity's thinking. Here's wishing a prosperous 2023 to everybody. 2022: Beyond the year that was Michael Falzon micfal45@gmail.com Russia has found itself waging a war against a Ukraine that is heavily supported by Europe and the US