Are we living the dangers that Orwell announced in “1984”?

In the famous novel by the British writer, he warned of a future marked by extreme control and surveillance. In current times, the advance of artificial intelligence and the rise of self-surveillance bring us ever closer to that world.

By Celeste Sawczuk

In "1984"George Orwell presented a society subject to absolute control, where the State could look into our lives at every moment. “Whether awake or asleep, working or eating, at home or on the street, in the bathroom or in bed, there was no escape,” he wrote. Orwell. A phrase that at the time sounded like a dystopian exaggeration, now seems to be projected into reality, where digital devices have become the new vigilantes and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes on the role of a constant observer. Has society reached the threshold of this bleak future? Yuval Noah Harari, one of the most influential contemporary thinkers, suggests that we may be getting dangerously close.

FOR Harari, AI is a unique and unprecedented threat, a “intelligence without rest”, capable of observing, analyzing and controlling at levels unimaginable to the tyrants of the past. “Hitler and Stalin couldn’t control people all the time, AI can,” warn. With a capacity for monitoring and data processing that does not depend on pauses or limits, AI is configured as a tool capable of “annihilate privacy” and create a regime of total controlwhich, unlike the old dictatorial systems, does not need human intermediaries.

The term “Orwellian” is projected into the present; modern surveillance structures allow for the tracking and analysis of every action. Orwell coined the term “Thought Police” in his work, an institution capable of repressing not only acts, but intentions and thoughts. In the present, Advances in AI and facial recognition technologies allow people to imagine that control on an even more precise level. This is where the boundaries between Orwell's fiction and current reality become ambiguous. Increasingly, control is not just a matter of state surveillance, but of self-surveillance, or as some have called it, the “Digital Panopticon”. Users accept, to a certain extent, being observed.

The concept of the newspeak, another crucial element in 1984, proposes a language designed for limit thought, narrow the conceptual freedom of the individual and repress dissent. Much like how AI algorithms on social media and digital platforms can currently manipulate information in such a way that only some messages reach users, Generating a kind of “single thought” promoted by the digital structure itself.

Orwell raised a paradox between freedom and control that resonates strongly: “Freedom is slavery,” he wrote, a motto of his dystopian regime that, in the present time, seems to take on new meanings in the age of social media, where mass access to information sometimes seems to encapsulate us in bubbles of misinformation and control.

Harari It also questions the fate of freedom in a society in which more and more “cultural artifacts” and “thoughts” are products of non-human intelligencesAI, an unprecedented technology, is beginning to participate in the creation of stories, music, images, and elements that until now had been the exclusive product of the human mind. “We are breaking the cocoon of human culture”, warns Harari, questioning what coexistence with an alien intelligence will mean for the psychology and social structures of humanity.

So is this the world that Orwell imagined? While Orwell projected in 1984 a warning against totalitarianism, The current reality seems be more subtle and complex. The omnipresence of connected devices, the algorithmic manipulation of information and the power of AI to analyse and influence, beyond human knowledge, present a scenario close to that of the renowned novel by the British writer and journalist.

What differentiates the present is perhaps the idea that ourselves, as individuals and societies, we have accepted and partly encouraged this control, in exchange for the promise of efficiency and security. In the end, as Orwell wrote, “Freedom is being able to say freely that two and two are four. If this is granted, everything else will follow in its own small steps.” At this crossroads between freedom and surveillance, the question remains: will we be able to uphold this simple but fundamental truth?

Source: INFOBAE