The good column: Would you rather have an espresso or a child?

I’m not sure that a better future would require radically reducing our dependence on modern technology. For the continued existence of humanity, people are needed more urgently than machines. On the other hand, when I think about how much time, attention and care my new espresso machine requires every day, I’m quite happy that I don’t have children.

The machine doesn’t whine all the time, and she’s almost certainly not in danger of becoming a Nazi when she turns 16. But just imagine: the theater starts early in the morning for her too. You’ve barely made your first espresso of the day – a process that is not accompanied by howling from the device, but by loud, rear-end collision-like noises – when the machine begins to make demands. A neon sign begins flashing aggressively, signaling to me that I should take care of replenishment or cleaning as quickly as possible: “Refill beans,” “Empty coffee grounds,” “Fill water.” Always in a commanding tone!

In contrast to the average child, for whom there is considerable need for improvement in terms of user-friendliness, the machine fortunately has a kind of filler neck (for water) and two separate chambers that make filling and disposing of waste much easier than with a child , which, according to all experience, constantly makes uncoordinated movements and for which, strictly speaking, coffee beans would probably not be suitable filling material in the long term, but the espresso machine still requires continuous care. (What is interesting in this context is that the manufacturer’s instructions on how to properly clean the device, which can be found in the operating instructions, read as if they could easily be applied to cleaning children: »Fresh milk residue can be easily removed – so just nothing Allow to dry! Wipe with a clean, damp cloth!”)

And you only go through all that effort so that you find a tiny puddle of espresso in your cup afterwards, which only wakes you up enough to immediately comply with the next demands made by the device. A diabolical cycle that you only see through when it is too late and the infernal machine has already taken root in the kitchen like dry rot in the masonry.

Well, now you’ll say, “What’s the stupid man complaining about?” He doesn’t have screaming and whining brats to care for and raise and has a reasonably functioning espresso machine. It would be good for him if he was happy and kept his mouth shut. But it’s not quite that simple. Because the truth is: machines are taking over more and more power.

The artificial intelligence installed in machines is also on the rise. It’s not just our household appliances that keep us on our toes and terrorize us every day. Whether home computers in continuous operation, electronic traffic control systems, financial market algorithms or damaged nuclear power plants: machines and artificial intelligence (AI) perpetuate the misery of capitalist industrial society. Without their smartphone or tablet in their hands, many people today feel like they are amputated. The machines of our everyday life have become one gigantic machine, and humans have long since mutated into their helpless and unconscious appendages, as the philosopher and technology critic Günther Anders predicted over 60 years ago.

And aren’t the AIs that have been so celebrated recently, since they are technologies that imitate human thinking and actions (and may ultimately replace humans), ultimately a special kind of machine? Over time, artificial intelligence such as the text-producing chatbot ChatGPT (and its successor models) will also make journalists obsolete. But on closer inspection, that doesn’t seem like the worst thing to me. Not even if the company that invented ChatGPT were called “Cyberdyne Systems” instead of “Open AI”. No machine, no artificial intelligence should be able to bring as much naked terror to the world linguistically as an average German journalism school. (“A report must be sensual: the reporter reflects what he feels, perceives, senses.”)

However: The AI ​​are trained by humans and learn from them, which means that they learn from the mixture of kitsch, propaganda and other linguistic rubbish that, under the name of journalism, is increasingly condensing on the Internet into huge virtual mountains of linguistic garbage, which are being used every minute grow. So one thing is certain: When machines and modern technologies completely replace us one day, things won’t get any better.