"Online platforms are a kind of artificial consciousness; they are trying to do the work of our cognitive systems, highlighting some possibilities and hiding others," or so claimed Francis Steen at the University of Navarra. Steen, who is a professor of communication studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, participated in a conference at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) that was funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The researcher claimed that the artificial intelligence research that aspires to reproduce brain functioning underestimates the brain's capabilities. He asserted that neither physics nor current mechanics are able to reproduce aspects such as creativity or the perception of value. "It may be that the brain uses other types of physics, but we have yet to discover it," he noted.

An example of artificial intelligence that anticipates human thought is found in the content based on internet users. In Steen's view, algorithms that choose what is important to users according to their “likes” limit our view and impair our ability to decide. "You get the information you like," he explained, "which means that your worldview is strengthened and other views are excluded." Against this, the expert emphasized that traditional media offer new points of view and information that audiences are not aware of.

Steen has analyzed how people behave in different scenarios and how both the media and online technologies alter what people think is possible. He pointed out that human beings want to know the possibilities and consequences of reality in order to control it. For this reason, he argued that most news "gives priority to the facts, as happens with our cognitive system."

Journalism: Analyzing facts to change reality

According to the professor, the news gives more importance to the possible, like who will win the PSOE primaries in Spain, the consequences of Trump’s campaign promises or even weather forecasting. He explained that this is so because, if people understand the factors involved in something and the consequences that it may have, they are better able to decide when and how to act to change reality.

Steen also assigns the media the role of reflecting on the "undesirable events" that have occurred to avoid their repetition. "Newspapers are full of articles about why Brexit won out. We cannot stop it, but we want to understand what happened," he noted.

Francis Steen contributed with these thoughts at a Creatime conference, which is part of the Public Discourse project at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. Creatime tries to understand human creativity through the study of imagination and the representation of time in oral conversation, non-verbal language (gestures), cinema and poetry.