Deus ex machina

Artificial intelligence. Digitalisation. Machine learning. 

Groan. So many buzzwords, so much disinformation, so much fake PR.

‘Deus ex machina’ is a literary term which basically means that the author ran out of options and quickly needed to fix the storyline with an intervention from above, often being linked to some form of novel, magic technology or highly ‘innovative’ solution.

This Red Button EDU programme aims to show the paradox of this literary term in everyday life and in relation to the technologies we’re most exposed to. AI is perceived as a magic silver bullet which will fashion solutions out of thin air and solve your problems, regardless whether they are in industry, healthcare, education, bureaucracy, or anything in between. But that’s not how it works. Thanks to over-zealous investors, hyped media pieces, and the misleading anthropomorphic term ‘Artificial intelligence’, this set of statistical and analytical tools is set up to fail under the current circumstances, because expectations around it are set so badly. We’re not dealing with killer robots, black-box algorithms, sexist computers, or immoral machines. Instead, we have at our fingertips one of the most powerful analytical and data processing tools that humanity ever discovered. If we don’t use this blessing well, we’re doomed to be stuck in a repetitive, stagnant dark age which has no chance of surviving repeated crises such as 2020 served up. Status quo simply isn’t working, and AI can change it. Why isn’t it working? What’s preventing the technological revolution from becoming reality for everyone, beyond the startup, tech elite of the metropolis?

AI is our future. AI is the next evolutionary stage. AI can actually help, and we can guide every single step of it. It’s not the Deus Ex Machina we so fear.

This content is being produced exclusively in English with Czech subtitles, in partnership with prg.ai.