A few months ago, I followed interviews conducted by Tucker Carlson with guests about the age of artificial intelligence and how the features of life in the United States and developed countries will change radically. As I watched, I found myself thinking about our own situation: the Algerian citizen does not know how to draft a petition or even a civic request to collect signatures and submit specific demands to the municipal, district, or provincial administration.
Yesterday, I passed by a disgraceful scene in one of the green areas: I saw trees submerged in sewage water—may God honor you—and not a single citizen moved to alert the authorities. How can an uncivilized people enter the age of artificial intelligence? And I do not know what civil society, with its associations, is doing, as we do not perceive their imprint in our daily reality.
People in the south suffer from a form of civilizational illiteracy: they are unaware of their rights and of the duties of citizenship, living day by day, with no ambitions beyond scraping together a living; and for some, merely boasting about social status and material standing, but without any civilizational horizon.
If our countries do not adopt a policy of producing knowledge and artificial intelligence according to our own standards, we will remain dependent—consumers of others’ intelligence and products—and dominance will inevitably belong to the intelligent, who work day and night to impose civilizational hegemony and leadership. History is unforgiving: those who accept a secondary role are erased from its pages, and no one will remember them except with contempt.
The paradox is profound: we possess all the components of civilizational power, yet we fail to activate them for fear of the sacrifices that would entail—sacrifices we are unwilling to make.
*Official and recent international reports—most notably those of the United Nations (UNDP), UNESCO, and the World Bank—affirm unanimously that the transition to a knowledge economy and artificial intelligence is not measured by the availability of technology alone, but by the presence of a civically qualified human being who possesses awareness of rights and duties, basic civic skills, and the capacity for collective action.
