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The study treats AI as a normal technology, not a superintelligence, and draws on past technological revolutions to project gradual implementation. Image: Freepik We're old enough to know that tech hype is practically a structural feature of modern capitalism. In saturated markets, the relentless pursuit of differentiation is a survival condition in a venture capital arena hungry for disruptive narratives to justify their valuations. In this sense, capitalism doesn't just sell products, but also dreams of the future. However, in the case of artificial intelligence, have market players gone too far? Constant versioning patterns point to an artificial intelligence that will emerge, the media says, like a kind of black hole. From this "singularity," already knocking at our doors, "no sector will escape," say influencers, tech gurus, politicians, and even some academics seeking prominence. "AI will transform EVERYTHING," warns the AI Safety community. "Adapt or die," claim the FOMO hysterics (those panicking out of fear of missing out). Now, a paper and book project, published in April by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University , brings a refreshing breeze to both the fog of a dystopian vision of an apocalyptic scenario without empirical basis and the sweet, cloying incense of the utopian vision. For the authors of this public reflection essay, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, respectively a computer science professor and doctoral candidate at Princeton University, AI is "normal technology," just like other "transformative general-purpose technologies, such as electricity and the internet." AI Innovation Is Fast, Adoption Is Slow The study notes that another technological revolution — industrial electrification — took 40 years to be implemented. Image: karlyukav/Freepik According to the study, the major problem with the current AI debate is that both sides place it in the position of an autonomous agent, capable of making decisions on its own and choosing humanity's destiny, attributing "full autonomy" that would leave it beyond human control. When they speak of "normal technology," Narayanan and Kapoor are actually rejecting this technological determinism. Drawing from historical transformations, the researchers emphasize that it's human institutions — not the "will of the technology" — that shape AI's social impacts. The assertion functions simultaneously as a description of the present (how AI really is today), a prediction of the future (a bet on its most likely trajectory), and a prescription for how we should treat it, including guidance on desirable policies and behaviors. "We do not think that viewing AI as humanlike intelligence is currently accurate or useful for understanding its societal impacts," the authors state in the study. Similarly, this anthropomorphic perspective doesn't provide a basis for anticipating future developments or guiding decisions. But perhaps one of the study's most important contributions is distinguishing between AI creation and adoption . While 40% of Americans have tried generative AI, they use it sparingly — just a few hours per month, not per day. In other words, people need to relearn how to work. Drawing an analogy with the Industrial Revolution, the study recalls that electricity took 40 years to truly transform factories, because it wasn't just a matter of plugging into an outlet. Everything had to be redesigned: machine layouts, work processes, and company structures. The Great Lesson of Electricity and AI's Future During the Industrial Revolution, workers began supervising the machines. Image: Courtesy of United Artists The parallel between the arrival of electricity during the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of AI isn't coincidental. True transformation only occurred when entrepreneurs realized they could place individual electric motors on each machine. More than a century later, AI may be going through the same process. Today, many companies and individuals are simply "plugging" AI into existing processes , such as using ChatGPT to write emails or automate specific tasks. But this means making these tasks more expensive. True transformation, like effective use of the technology, will only come with a complete redesign of business models, professions, work routines, and even social structures. Ironically, the belief that AI will create entirely new ways of producing, interacting, and living is what fuels the hype. Just as Industrial Revolution workers began supervising machines, future jobs will tend to focus on configuring, monitoring, and supervising automated systems. Narayanan and Kapoor warn that without human supervision, AI can make frequent errors that could render it commercially unviable. Despite some complacency regarding employment impacts and some excessively categorical predictions about human supremacy, the paper fulfills its purpose: it offers a balanced perspective between two extreme scenarios and suggests policies grounded in historical lessons rather than speculation.

You Can’t Take It With You is an ode to the cinema. At the age of eighty, there is nothing that makes it more naive or outdated. In the residence of Grandpa Vanderhof people live together and do exactly what they want and only what they want: children, grandchildren, sons-in-law or simply people who went there and did not leave. This anarchic family-community, perhaps a harbinger of what, thirty years later, would become the hippies contrasts sharply with the other family plot, the grumpy banker JP Kirby who, investing in the design of an ammunition plant (the movie is prior to World War II), needs to buy a whole neighborhood, but his investment is frustrated precisely by a resident who insists on not selling his property: Vanderhof that regards ​​more the family values ​​than any value in money. But another quarrel makes the fate of families intersect: the romance between J. P.’s son and vice president of the company, Tony, and his secretary Alice, by chance Grandpa's granddaughter who does not want to sell the house. The scene of the rich family's visit to the Sycamores house is worthy of the so-called screwball comedies of the 1930s, though the film lacks a vocation for laughter, drifting to incredibly modern themes like greed for more and more money, impoverishment of the population (would the 2008-09 Recession be a remake of the Great Depression?), and even the fear of the "red peril," the Communist threat that has been attending America's electoral agendas. The ending of the movie is a good example of what was called in the Capra-corn era, movies that extol the best that was (and still is) in human nature: sensitivity, gentleness, humility, and good humor. If we understand that mankind is governed by greed, selfishness and lack of love, it is easy to understand how the solutions of You Can’t Take It With You lead us to moments of pure enlightenment and dream. As Vanderhof persuades the accountant Poppins to leave the bank and move to his house to make masks and toys, he, still wary, says: "the die is cast". #capra #review

Curious is the word "subversive" that has been the adjective most applied to The Last Tango in Paris . Curious because, 46 years ago, when the film was released, subversive sounded like a libertarian in Europe and a destroyer of good manners in Third World countries. Now, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, and on the director's death week, the film reappears in the media as offensive or disturbing. But what was, at the time of the launch of The Last Tango in Paris, and is on the rise again, is a real inability to deal with sexual themes, an inability that never ceased to exist, but sounded a little tacky in "culturally correct" environment. Paul and Jeanne met in a Paris apartment for rent in 1972. For some of these reasons that seem strange but certainly inhabit the minds of many, the 45-year-old man kisses the 20-year-old girl and initiates a sexual breakthrough that just cannot be considered rape by her agreement. From there they begin a relationship with the condition, imposed by the American, that no names or personal details were revealed. The movie is so restricted in this respect that we never knew the name of Rosa's mother, Paul's wife who had just committed suicide. If social intimacy does not appear, sexual intercourse is wide open, potty-mouth and dirty (in a good sense, we might say). Bertolucci leaves the actors free for improvisations, and what you see are moments of pure lyricism. Impossible to forget the metamorphosis lived by Paul, a violent man in a little boy sobbing next to the body of his dead wife. There is also an emblematic scene that we might classify as prophetic, in which Jeanne voices against her fiancé Tom, who is filming her life, complaints about how she "can not stand being used" and even "feels raped", phrases that would be employed by the actress Maria Schneider later, in the real life. The photograph of Vittorio Storaro and the music of Gato Barbieri frame this work of art. #bertolucci #review

Apocalypse Now is not a war movie. Conceived initially from Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness, which tells of the pursuit of an adventurer in the jungles of the Congo, he was transposed into the Vietnam War, where he certainly found a scenario even gloomier than the original story. What you see in the movie are guns. Weapons that, at first glance, would be the most obvious element of a "war" movie, but which, during the narrative, show their power to bring forth the horror and power of destruction that, we discover, dwells in each one of us. The main plot shows Captain Willard, from the so-called "special forces" (read license to kill), who, like a backward Ulysses, heads to a remote location on the battlefield in Cambodia, with the mission of exterminating the Colonel Kurtz, a decorated officer who, insane, starts to command an army of mountaineers as if he were a demigod. On board a US Navy patrol boat in the company of four crew members, the captain climbs the Nùng River on a mind-blowing bad trip laden with icons of the American way of life as background for destruction. Thus, a surfing competition is why Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (who loves the smell of napalm in the morning) destroys all the vegetation of an island. On a routine inspection on a fishing boat, a puppy becomes a motive for slaughter. Two of the boat's characters are equally ridiculously killed. Strangely, the encounter with Colonel Kurtz (the moment we finally find Marlon Brando, though half hidden by Vittorio Storaro's magical lenses) is not as shocking as the expectation of reviewing the best actor in the world in action. But nothing, neither the revivals nor alternative endings nor criticism nor problems of production take from Apocalypse Now the brilliance of being one of the darker films already released, and one of the majors in the history of the cinema. #coppola #review

When asked why I started Filmes Fodásticos (Fuckastic Movies in English), I answer that it is for people to feel tempted to watch movies like The Seventh Seal . There is always this curious belief by people who simply go to the movies that the movie must "show" something or "teach" something or whatever. As if art (cinema is an art, remember?) had some utilitarian function. Ingmar Bergman becomes annoyingly perfect in building this movie. They say about psychological plot or film about death, but the story shows an almost psychotic clarity about an eternal subject: fear, and, in a special way, the fear of being alone. Hence the despair of God's absence. Antonius Block, the knight who perceives to have wasted ten years of his life on the Crusades recognizes: "I cry for him (God) in the dark but there is no one there." Curiously, the only fantastic figure present is the Death who, with his black cloak, says to accompany the knight throughout his journey. Block proposes to the entity a game of chess, not to delay its departure but to speculate about God (without success). The game runs through the entire movie until the horseman cheats, and in a seemingly suicidal move, manages to save the life of a couple of artists of a troupe: Jose, Maria, and his son. Beside the squire Jons, who, unlike the traditional auxiliaries, is literate, philosopher and atheist, the knight returns to his castle through a scene of destruction in which are mixed black plague, Romanesque architecture, the burning of a teenage witch and the passage of a multitude of pilgrims practicing self-flagellation. The end of the movie is not equally palatable to moviegoers. Asking who wins the game of chess is irrelevant when we learn that Death never loses. And will never lose. The artists lead their wagon to the horizon, while Joseph, who is a sort of seer, observes: "The strict Lord of Death put them all to dance." Maria doubts about her husband's visions. And the child smiles. #bergman #review

If not mentioned its release year, 1971, Clockwork Orange could be mistaken for a modern documentary on gangs. The subject here is not the violence itself, which caused the ban on the movie in several countries, but it is about politics, which appears all the time in the plot as a mechanism (clockwork?) for the maintenance of the status quo. Thus, protagonist Alex DeLarge leads his group of droogies ("friends" in the dialect Nadsat in which the film is narrated, and also in the book by Anthony Burgess), organizing the inherent activities of the youths of that dystopian society: beating beggars, rapes, robberies and depredations in general. Alex's post-correctional counselor, the bizarre Fr. R. Deltoid, just waits for the time when his ward to commit some crime to hand him over to (equally violent) police. The opportunity does not delay, as the boy ends up killing a cheeky cat breeder and is sentenced to 14 years in prison. Already in prison, and now a devoted chaplain's associate, Alex volunteers for a government-sponsored behavior change experiment. Called Ludovico's treatment, the experience consisted of implanting an aversive response to visual stimuli of violent scenes. By accident, the soundtrack to a film about Nazi atrocities is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Alex's most beloved song that will thereafter be equally painful for the "regenerate" prisoner. No longer the perpetrator, Alex becomes a victim. Not only of the state but also of all its ancient objects of torment. One of its victims, a leader of the opposition to the government, puts the protagonist in a limit situation, so that, when seeking to kill himself, he invalidates the official chemical treatment. By force of destiny, Alex leaves alive, although with many fractures, of the opposition attempt. Realizing his importance as a media pawn in the power game, Alex finally discovers the place where he can exercise his psychopathy in an institutionalized and liberating way: politics. #kubrick #review

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is an obligatory film in all aspects. And this is because the concept of the "bourgeoisie" has been changing through the ages. However, whatever the occasion, some features, all of them very clear in the film, will prevail: hypocrisy, narcissism, selfishness, and a certain amount of stupidity. As described by the Brazilian singer Cazuza after stating that "the bourgeoisie stinks," Buñuel makes clear with his characters that the bourgeoisie wants to be rich. They are people who stand above the hungry crowd but well below the elite: advisors to politicians, bishops, colonels, diplomats. Today we would all be the ones who posted photos on Facebook showing our barbecues and a boat tour at San Antonio. At this point, the most striking feature of the film appears: although characters are ALWAYS at dinners, where the recurring subject is food itself, they can NEVER eat, either because they miss the date or because the chef is being veiled in a coffin next to the kitchen or even interrupted by military maneuvers (great!). It is as if, through cynical humor, the director condemned the bourgeoisie to never participate in the great capitalist banquet. In this context, the concept of bourgeoisie ceases to appear in political or economic significations. Here the bourgeoisie is a pure fetish, as, indeed, disseminated in social media today. Fetish is another trademark of the director. In this work, it appears in multiple tones: the couple who decide to have sex in the garden at the same time that the guests arrive for dinner, the bishop who becomes excited when dressing as a gardener (and ends up expelled from the house, until returning with his clerical dress and have his ring kissed), and in a scene worthy of Marx (the brothers), Don Rafael Acosta, ambassador of a fictitious Latin country, escapes from a firing that hits all the guests hiding under the table, but ends up betrayed when trying to get a piece of ham Bourgeoisie, in 1972, were the others. Today, maybe we are all of us. #buñuel #review

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a movie that surpasses the shallow concept of animation and launches (webs?) in a well-elaborated plot that ends up being an autonomous work, far beyond the kitsch universe of the minor heroes of Hollywood and with artistic pretensions unimaginable. The story subverts what you have become used to see in movies born of comic books. To begin with, the hero, Miles Morales, is a Brooklyn boy of black-Spanish descent. At the outset, the great drama of the boy's life is the difficulty of getting in touch with the staff of his new private school, where he was taken by his father (sometimes literally by car), a tough cop who vehemently disapproves the work of the vigilante Spider-Man who (calm!) either exists and is not yet our main character. The plot is elaborated within the notion of multiple universes, but these concepts do not weigh the development of the scenes, always executed with much precision and beauty. In fact, what strikes the Aranha-Verse is the force of images, which occur naturally without being attached to any specific style. At no point does the movie try to convince viewers that it is not an animation itself. On the contrary, the colors explode on the screen, in psychedelia that superimposes the textures of old comics with the modern features of live action. The amazing thing is that everything is done at the same time, overlapping rough elements with a highly evolved design. When the various spidermen begin to emerge, as a side effect of a particle accelerator capable of fusing multiple multiverses, the visual impact is accentuated because there is a mix of styles, including the bizarre 2D pig Spider-Ham or the Spider-Man Noir in black and white. However, the art direction is perfect, the dialogues remain consistent and, what is the great quality of the film, the good mood is contagious. Even though the fight with the King of Crime is over and the conflict with his father is resolved, the new Spider-Man of this universe remains connected with parallel universes, culminating in a sensational scene in post-credits. #ramsey #persichetti #rothman #review

Last Year at Marienbad is a movie unlike anything seen in the movies. Many call it a cinematic experience, and it is not known if it is an experience of the public in the search for new languages, ​​or an experience of filmmakers, director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, to test the resilience of viewers. Not that the film is toxic. On the contrary, Last Year is beautiful, with impeccable cinematography, a perfect art direction, and an absolutely revolutionary edition. But what makes the work controversial is his refusal to provide any kind of gratification to the audience. Starting with the characters who are not even named. We have characters identified in the script by the letters A, X and M. What do these letters mean? Would they be initials? No one knows. The plot, at first simplistic, will prove to be much more confusing than it seems. In a baroque castle, which could also be a hotel or a mansion, X is a man who seeks to retake a possible romance begun the previous year with A, a beautiful woman. However, she does not remember the affair and not even X, although he claims there was a promise that they would both run away together. To counteract this insistence, easily classified as harassment nowadays, we have M, an enigmatic man, an inveterate player, who can be both A's husband and some kind of protector. The action (if so-called) is all staged, with many characters remaining motionless and others moving, the few dialogues most often refer to fortuitous, totally irrelevant events that, when they reach a deadlock, are "checked" in the library. Scenes are repeated endlessly, often described in off, the settings do not match what is narrated and the characters get involved and move away. There seems to be a tragedy or an accident, but in the end, X reports to the audience that A has agreed to leave with him, although we are not sure whether it is a matter of reality or pure illusion. As often occurs in movies. #resnais #review

Wings of Desire , awful translation of the Germanic original Sky Over Berlin, is a magnificent movie. From the roof of the Gedächtniskirche church in the former East Berlin, a being we suspect is an angel (by a pair of soon-to-be-missed wings) looks at the city, beautiful, stony and gloomy. The black-and-white photograph, bluish-gray, was a finding by the historical cinematographer Henri Alekan (from the classic The Beauty and the Beast of 1946) to show the views of the angels Damiel and Cassiel, who, from the earliest days of the planet, observe all but little interfere in the course of events, except, for example, some words in the ear of a suicidal, fruitless. The scenes seen by humans are colorful. The movie flows with angelic tranquility, with the two immortal beings transiting through libraries, squares, monuments. The wings of the goddess Vitoria, a statue of Victory Column, Berlin's postcard, serve as a shelter for Damiel who decides to become a human being to, among other things, be able to feed the cat or take his feet out of the shoes under the table. There are other striking characters in the film, who interact with the angels, such as the American actor Peter Falk who does not stand for: he is the eternal American detective, but, strangely, feels the presence of Damiel, interacts with him and still challenges him to rub his hands to warm them. There is also the poet Homer, a tribute to Rainer Maria Rilke, whose poetry inspired the film. Finally, the trapeze artist Marion is the female presence, unstable, depressive. There is in her a pain that can be the same pain of loneliness that Damiel carries for eternity. When he becomes human and joins the beautiful aerialist, he experiences "the total astonishment caused by man and woman, a knowledge that no angel can attain". When it ends, the movie promises a sequel, which would take place in 1993. For the viewer, who cannot avoid identify himself with the angels, there remain the stanzas of German playwright Peter Handke's poetry that speaks of children's questions: "Why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there? " #wenders #review

Blow-up , Antonioni's masterpiece, was an absolutely revolutionary film in 1966 and, after more than 50 years, presents some elements indicative of what we now call liquid modernity. The plot, based on a short story by Julio Cortázar, follows the life of a London fashion photographer. Dividing his work between artistic pictures (for a book) and a photo session with actual models, Thomas experiences a kind of fastidiousness for the complete liberation of manners, translated by psychedelic parties, free sex and drug use. For a 21st-century viewer, what strikes the film is the stupid and totally inadequate way in which the photographer treats women: they are insulted, scolded, and abused in every way. It is as if the protagonist had experienced all possible pleasures and nothing else surprised or repressed him. Photographing randomly in a park, he records the meeting of a couple whose nature of the relationship we will never know. However, the woman follows Thomas to his studio and tries in every way, even out of seduction, to force him to deliver the film roll. The photographer hands over a different film roll and the woman leaves informing her phone. False. The revelation of the photos shows that a murder crime may have occurred. A blow-up reveals some details that can be investigated by the photographer and also by the curious audience: a concealed weapon and a body that, later, Thomas claims is still in place. Upon returning home, Thomas checks that all evidence and negatives have been stolen. She walks around the city and looks at the enigmatic woman, Jane, in a movie line, but again with the spectators, the photographer loses sight of her. Coming back once more to the park, where the body disappeared, Thomas is invited by a troupe of pantomime students to return a tennis ball to play an imaginary game. When he returns it, we hear the noise of the ball. Then Thomas disappears too. #antonioni #review

Cold War is an amazing movie in all aspects. Starting with the 4:3 screen format, almost square, in contrast to the modern trend of widescreen productions. The beautiful photograph of the young Polish cinematographer Łukasz Żal features a black and white figured out in a striking and intimate chiaroscuro. Following the track of an unlikely couple, a conductor who researches folk songs and a singer and dancer, the film recounts the relationship of 15 years, mainly occurred in the 50s, which, in any other production, would be an epic but here it is reduced to fast scenes of a passion that transits between unexplained intensity and challenged impossibility. Although time is linear, it occurs in uneven spaces and with no clue as to when the scene occurs. It is as if the script wants to prove at every moment that reality always finds a way to demolish all the plans and dreams. This is how the group of Polish traditions that intends to represent the true rural art ends up being co-opted by the communist party, unfurling a gigantic poster of Lenin. The musician Wiktor invites his beloved Zula to cross the border to the West in Berlin (there was no wall yet), but the girl has other priorities. From this first mismatch, others occur. Paris does not match the ideal dreamed by Wiktor, who becomes a pianist in a club and composes soundtracks for horror movies. Eventually, they get together, but the relationship does not work out. The musician tries to return to Poland, goes to Yugoslavia to attend a performance of the Mazurek troupe just to see Zula, but none of this works either. The ending of the movie is breathtakingly beautiful. After going through all the misfortunes and managing to overcome geographical, political and psychological barriers, the couple, named after Pawlikowski's parents, finally solve the problem of remaining together. Forevermore. #review #pawlikowski