{"id":62578,"date":"2023-02-02T11:41:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T09:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-76\/"},"modified":"2023-03-09T13:49:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T11:49:35","slug":"diari-de-les-idees-76","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-76\/","title":{"rendered":"Diari de les idees 76"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The new edition of Diari de les Idees<\/em> highlights the agreement reached to supply armoured vehicles to Ukraine despite Germany\u2019s initial reluctance; the worrying situation in the Sahel and the collapse of the party system and democracy in Peru; the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the European arrest warrants issued by Judge Llarena against Carles Puigdemont and the other exiles; the debates that have taken place at Davos (the World Economic Forum) on the concept of deglobalisation; and the growing impact of new technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence on people’s daily lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On global matters, Agathe Demarais, author of Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests<\/em> (Columbia University Press, 2022), points out in Le Grand Continent<\/em>,<\/a> ten points to understand how the international sanctions system works. Demarais emphasises that over the last two decades, Washington has imposed more sanctions than the European Union, the United Nations and Canada combined, and that these are only one instrument among many other diplomatic measures. On the other hand, she highlights that when the sanctioned country has significant financial resources, the impact of sanctions can only be slow, gradual and accumulative; to expect the rapid collapse of a major economy is a delusion. She also argues that when the removal of sanctions is not accompanied by tangible benefits, the countries targeted by these sanctions may feel they have nothing to gain by changing their behaviour. In this sense, Russia and China \u2014the two most important target countries\u2014 have based their bilateral trade in yens or roubles, and in a few decades, the digital yen could become a referential currency for trade with China. In this way, the implementation of non-Western financial mechanisms is an opportunity for China to acquire the ability to force certain companies and even countries out of the Chinese market. Finally, Demarais points out that the Russian and Chinese desire to gain influence in emerging countries is not new: vaccine diplomacy (both Russian and Chinese), massive Chinese investments through the Silk Road and the Russian rhetoric aimed to link sanctions and food insecurity are three recent examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still about China, Richard Artz points out in Slate<\/a><\/em> magazine that the decision to end the strictest anti-Covid measures is having major consequences. Hospitals are overwhelmed by the influx of sick people, there is a lack of medicines and, in several towns, crematoriums are overcrowded. The fact that Xi Jinping has not publicly intervened to justify this change in policy, even though he has assumed and justified the initiatives taken over the last three years, leads the author to ask himself whether the Chinese president is really the driving force behind this change in health policy. At the same time, another area of great concern to the Chinese leaders: the country\u2019s economic situation. On January 17th, there was a publication on the growth numbers of 2022, which was only 3%, and in the fourth quarter the GDP grew only 1.8%. These results are far from the 6% growth of that of five years ago, and even farther from the 10% minimum growth of 2000-2010. Moreover, in December, China exportations fell by 9.9% (the biggest drop since 2020) and, in November, by 8.7%. In addition to the restated confinements that paused the activity of many cities, there has been an increase of China’s debt and a fall in investments, together with a great decline in household consumption. On the other hand, the young unemployment rate exceeds the 30%. All this data is generating pessimism in the Chinese population, that looks like is reflecting, above all, on the declining birth rate. Finally, all these factors risk shattering the theory spread by the Chinese Communist Party that, in all areas, its management of the country is more successful than that of other governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Africa, Carlos Fr\u00edas analyses in El Independiente<\/a><\/em> the cocktail of poverty, crime, religious fanaticism and commercial routes that make Sahel the perfect region for Islamic radicalism to reproduce. The fall of the Islamic estate in Syria and Iraq was a hard blow to jihadist ambitions, which do not cease in the ambition to constitute a worldwide caliphate. The situation on poverty and the lack of expectative, together with a rapidly growing demographic, are being exploited by terrorist groups to reach out to the youngest. Their approach is that they are in this situation because they distanced themselves from God. For this reason, the solution is to get closer so they can take benefit from a victimhood narrative to seduce population. The strategic position of Sahel makes it the central point of commercial routes, where a wide range of products circulate, but also drugs, people, and weapons. Another added problem is the question on how to approach local authorities and citizens without making international missions seen as new ways of colonialism or paternalism. Finally, Russia\u2019s arrival on the continent by the hands of Wagner\u2019s paramilitary forces has paralysed Western operations in a context where, in exchange for help, Europe is asking for human rights, democracy and an end to corruption, while Russia only asks to take natural resources and to share the profits with local elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South America, Peru is undergoing a serious political and civil crisis, and weeks of protests have culminated in thousands of people arriving in the capital amidst violent confrontations and a free-for-all with the police. As a result of the recent removal of former president Pedro Castillo, the protests have exposed the existent deep divisions in the country. The internal and external factors are worsening these divisions. According to Eduardo Gamarra\u2019s analysis for The Conversation<\/a><\/em>, it is important to understand that this crisis has being taking shape for some time and is rooted in the nature of the Peruvian political system, beyond what has been described as self-coup by Castillo, while his followers consider that he tried to avoid any other kind of coup, incited by the Congress. The country\u2019s current constitution, adopted in 1993, but rectified ten times since that moment, causes ambiguity on who has more power: the president or the Congress. At the same time, the old system of political parties has been dismantled, and former powerful formations do not exist anymore or make efforts to maintain the support left. As a result, more than dozen parties are represented at the Congress, which stands in the way of any leader or party to obtain a majority. If that were not enough, the country is deeply polarised and divided into different lines: ethnical, racial, economical and regional. It also highlights the fact that the support for the protests is coming from the Andean Plateau (southern Peru), which is Quechuan and Aymaran for the most part: two of the main indigenous groups of the region. Peruvian Quechuans and Aymarans are \u201cfirst cousins\u201d from the same groups across the border, in Bolivia. This is important in the context of the current protests. Finally, now Peru fins itself with an unpopular ex-president in jail, and an unpopular president in charge of the country with a controversial legitimacy. The central topic that caught the attention during the last weeks has been the ship of Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Armoured vehicles are war instruments that give the mobility, protection and firepower and that can be crucial to obtain a change within the current standstill of the front lines. In spite of the ships of dozens of modern tanks coming from the West, this does not guarantee that the objective will be achieved in the short term. It was the standstill on the front lines that caused the allied side during World War I to create a device that allowed soldiers to cross the trenches, cut enemy lines, wreak havoc with the mobile artillery system, and to set up a protection system (armour) that turned the ammunition of that time into something useless. It is very likely that what Kyiv wants is to break some of the already stablished lines: the central front, the Kherson or the Kharkiv front. However, to carry out such an operation requires a huge military deployment. If we assume that all the logistical and troops training complications are quickly resolved, experts in military, especially in mechanised combat, pointed out in La Vanguardia<\/a><\/em>, that to break any of these three fronts, would require 300 tanks and three times as many motorised infantry vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Ruth Ferrero-Turri\u00f3n highlights in P\u00fablico<\/a><\/em> the importance of identifying the framework within which the decision has been taken. In this framework \u2013in which most of the Western governments are situated\u2013 it is not other than betting for a military victory without temporary solutions on Russia. Until recently, one could find reticence, appeals to prudence, and someone even recalled the option of trying some kind of preliminary dialogue. Nowadays, the only one who does not seem to be sure about it, is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, even though Western leaders do not know what the Germans think about this issue, and perhaps this could offer some clue as to Scholz’s reticence. According to a poll conducted by the DPA News Agency in December 2022, 45% of Germans would be against sending battle tanks, compared to 33% who would be in favour. In another survey conducted by ARD-DeustchlandTrend at the beginning of January, the reluctance with which Germans view the surrender of weapons was clear; 41% of survey respondents believed that the military support given so far to Ukraine was enough. At the same time, no one at this stage dares to speak of any kind of ceasefire or that of a negotiation. None of the parties still thinks of stopping. Quite the contrary. Both opponents are rearming for what is expected to be the toughest confrontation in spring. It is then that Leopards and Patriots tanks will perhaps be able to determine the course of the war. Ferrero argues that if it is true that the arrival of Western aid, both financial and military, has so far prevented Ukrainian defeat, it is no less true that this will not be enough to bring about a total defeat of Russia. From here, there are three scenarios to work on. The first is that of the total expulsion of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which seems extremely complicated, even with the deployment of Leopards and Patriots. The second would be the negotiation. This is an unlikely option in light of recent actions and statements by both sides. Therefore, the last scenario that remains open is that of a long war that will be frozen along front lines that neither side will want to desist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In relation to the pressure on Germany regarding the Leopards shipment, Steven Erlanger and Erika Solomon point out in The New York Times<\/a><\/em> the historical and domestic political reasons that explain Olaf Scholz\u2019s hesitation. In fact, since the defeat of Nazism, Germany has been dedicated to promote peace and to integrate itself in a European and transatlantic security where the consensus is the cornerstone. Now, the war at Ukraine is forcing Germany to rethink its place in Europe, its relationship with Russia, and its military force. Germany built its post-war economy with cheap Russian energy and the supposedly apolitical trade with Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China, believing that commercial exchanges bring about changes and can somehow moderate the authoritarian regimes. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken all of this and has been a psychological and political shock that has undermined many of the ideas about Russia, its president, and Germany’s role in a Europe suddenly at war. Despite Germany’s support to Ukraine, the reluctance to send tanks reflects the deep ambivalence of a nation with a catastrophic history of aggression during World War II that remains deeply divided over whether to become a military leader and risk a direct confrontation with Russia. In this way, different polls show that half of the Germany population does not want to ship tanks to Ukraine. Germans want to be seen as partners, not like attackers, and have a particular sensibility when it comes to give weapons away to regions where, historically, German weapons were used to murder millions of people in Russia, Poland and Ukraine. But putting history aside, politics come to play. Both the Social Democrats and the Greens, the main partners in the coalition government, have important pacifist sectors that party leaders cannot ignore. For this reason, Scholz also has to keep in mind the intern politics, since in terms of strategy and politics, most of the Social Democrats are pacifists and the German Chancellor leads a five-party coalition (considering the pacifist wings of the Greens and the Social Democrats). It should also be kept in mind that the Social Democrats have many voters in the former East Germany, where the population is more sympathetic to Moscow’s discourse. Finally, there is also the concern, and not only among the Germans, that the escalating war and the usage of Western tanks will only increase the brutality of the fighting and the number of deaths, without fundamentally altering the course of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Catalan and Spanish political scenario, it can be highlighted that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) seems to have paved the way for a new European arrest warrant against the former president of the Government of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont. The judges consider that a judicial authority cannot, in theory, refuse to execute a European arrest warrant on the ground that the court, which will have to prosecute the person sought in the issuing Member State, lacks jurisdiction. This authority will be able, nevertheless, to refuse to execute this order if it finds that in this Member State there are systematic or widespread deficiencies affecting its judicial system and that the jurisdictional authority that has to execute the person is incompetent. One of Llarena\u2019s questions was about whether a member state can determine which court of another state is the competent authority. In this case, there are three possible scenarios. The first one is to return to Spain. Carles Puigdemont\u2019s objective is to return to Catalonia as soon as possible. This would be the next step if the General Court of the European Union (GCEU) considers his petitions against the European Parliament for not having sufficiently defended him, and for having granted the request made by Pablo Llarena. This meant the lifting of the immunity that protected him from the rest of European countries. The second scenario would suppose the appealing to The Court of Justice of the European Union. This will happen if the GCEU agrees with the European Parliament: the representative who alleged that, according to his opinion, Puigdemont had been granted the status of Member of Parliament \u201cprobably illegally\u201d, since Spain does not recognise his credentials, as he did not complied with the Constitution at the Congress. Finally, the third scenario is related to another important procedure that Carles Puigdemont is pending to adopt the next decisions, which has to do with preliminary questions contemplated by judge Llarena in relation to the arrest warrants. The Spanish magistrate appealed to the Court of Justice a series of questions after the Belgian refusal to hand over former minister Lluis Puig on the grounds that the Supreme Court was not the competent court to judge him. This first round on the judicial fight was won by the Supreme Court. The European Union’s General Advocate declared that a country can only refuse a surrender in the face of systemic human rights violations, which is not the case in Spain. The final sentence is expected by the end of the year. If the CJEU rules in favour of Llarena, he will ask for extradition once more, although Belgium could also refuse to admit the Spanish reclamation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In European matters, Pol Bargu\u00e9s reviews in CIDOB<\/a> magazine how a possible instability in the Western Balkans has acquire more significance in the context of the war in Ukraine. The last few months, numerous news related to the region reflected how the geopolitical tension in Europe has also been transferred to the Balkan scenario. Amidst so many challenges, the EU is more determined than ever before to win over the Balkans. The first positive sign to this ambition has been to offer Bosnia and Hercegovina the longed-for EU candidate status. Still, over the years, the promises and intentions are no longer enough, and the Western Balkans \u2013both leaders and the community\u2013 have lost their trust in the European institutions. Without clear perspective for European integration, other extern factors have increased their influence, with an alarming growth in Russian disinformation campaigns that destabilise the Balkans and weaken the cooperation with the EU. In this way, Serbia\u2019s situation is concerning: the most similar country to the Kremlin\u2019s and the opposite to the NATO. In addition, the Belgrade\u2019s government enjoys cheap Russian gas, and has not aligned itself with EU sanctions on Russia. On the other hand, the communitarian passivity has also opened the door to the display of a major Chinese influence, especially with the pandemic. Faced with a slow response from the EU, China financed a network of laboratories to test COVID-19 and, months later, released one million doses of Sinopharm vaccine. What it could have been a cooperation between the EU and Serbia to fight the pandemic, it turned out into an economic and diplomatic approach between Beijing and Belgrade. Moreover, the inversions in Balkan\u2019s strategic sectors and critic infrastructures have enabled Chinese companies to increase their competitiveness in European markets. Montenegro has turned to China for the construction of the highway from the port of Bar to Boljare, crossing the entire country and connecting it to Serbia and the rest of Europe. The context of geostrategic tension, provoked by the war in Ukraine, has motivated the EU to reinforce its ambition as an actor in the region, in an attempt to counteract the influence of third parties. Also, in recent months, there has been an important diplomatic effort to normalise relations between Serbia and Kosovo. After several meetings between presidents, facilitated by the EU Special Representative for the region, they have managed to solve the controversy of the license plates that had been dragging on for years. Germany and France also seem to be ready to move towards a better involvement in resolving the conflict. In early November, a plan to solve the dispute was leaked to the press. This consisted \u2013according to different versions of the document\u2013 of offering Serbia a rapid process of European integration in exchange for its recognition of Kosovo\u2019s existence (even if this recognition was not formal). In conclusion, the EU is determined to regain its involvement in the Western Balkans. Now the question is whether this will be enough to revert the political paralysis, the recurrent tensions, and the discouragement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the area of democracy, Jos\u00e9 Pedro Teixeira Fernandez states in the Portuguese newspaper P\u00fablico<\/a><\/em> that if the global market and the interdependence were war antidotes, many are now questioning whether the interdependence created by globalisation is the core of the problem. The idea of transforming the interdependence in a geo-economic weapon is analysed in a book published by Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, The uses and abuses of weaponized interdependence<\/em> (Brookings Institution Press, 2021). They argue that considering interdependence (alone) as a factor inhibiting the use of military force,  hides the fact that it also creates new instruments of power and coercion, which can be used by dominant states to maintain their hegemony (such as the U.S.) and by states that challenge the established international liberal order (such as China and Russia, among others). Teixeira points out that the critical point is the structural inequality of power that favours certain states in damage to others. For example, states with political authority over the central nodes of global network structures have an advantage when it comes to imposing costs on others. A part from using international trade as a weapon against the political pressure, the interdependence created by globalisation has meant the possibility to use new weapons linked to the system asymmetry. A clear example is the current global financial system that has intensified the centrality of the U.S. thanks to the role of the dollar as a reserve currency, due to the fact that is the most used currency in the international market (a value quite above the participation of the U.S. in the imports and exports worldwide). Finally, the use of interdependence as a weapon has secondary effects on globalisation. The case of the U.S. is the most paradoxical one. They were the main drivers of commercial, financial, technological and internet globalisation. Yet, they are now at the centre of the reverse trend, which began with Donald Trump but has intensified with Joe Biden. Interdependence as a weapon to coerce or sanction rivals and adversaries \u2013mainly China and Russia \u2013economically, commercially or technologically, has broader and more far-reaching repercussions than we might think. In consequence, this pushes globalisation further away from a collaborative logic to become a field of confrontation, blurring the boundaries between peace and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in Foreign Affairs<\/a><\/em>, Justin Casey and Daniel Nexon claim that it is not difficult to avoid the feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu when Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s followers stormed the main federal institutions in early January, being a clear parallelism to the scenes experienced in Washington Capitol two years ago. They consider that there is nothing coincidental in the similarities between these two attacks on liberal democracy. Right-wing populists from different countries have taken inspiration in Donald Trump\u2019s politics, despite that the transnational connections between the right-wing populist movements go beyond narratives and ideas. In this way, Bolsonaro, his deputies, and many of his followers maintain close relationships with leaders and right-wing organizations in the U.S. Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is, at least for now, one of the most successful stories of the right-wing extremism with political consequences, since for four years he had the control over the most powerful country in the world. At the same time, the influence of right-wing populists has also increased in most Western democracies, as it is seen in the Brexit victory in the UK, the growing power of right-wing anti-immigrant parties in France and Germany, and the recent rise of right-wing parties and leaders in Italy and Sweden.  It is not the first time that transnational and right-wing extremism movements have emerged as a major force in international politics. The years from World War I to World War II also lived big crisis and dissatisfaction towards stablished parties and centre-right ideologies. The advances that were, as today, associated with the spread of new communication technologies, provoked the global rise of fascism (and revolutionary socialism in the left-wing). However, the authors discuss that the 1920s and 1930s are also instructive beyond the fascism debate, since they highlight the threat that increasingly normalised and transnationally linked right-wing movements mean to liberal democracies. They also present different reasons for optimism. On the one hand, most of today\u2019s liberty democracies are more rooted and unified than those of the interwar period. On the other hand, the evolution of the 1920s and 1930s expose the difficulty of what right-wing extremism movements face when it comes to hold the international cooperation. In this way, they suggest that the advocates of liberal democracy have to cooperate if they want to maximise the advantages and to effectively explore the weaknesses of the opponents. At the same time, today\u2019s centre-left and centre-right parties are more positioned to defend themselves from their right-wing extremism rivals. However, the authors conclude that we must be careful, as nowadays, the transnational right-wing extremism has broken onto the political scenario and some of its ideas are becoming mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the economy, Pablo Bustinguy points out in P\u00fablico<\/a><\/em> that the last World Economic Forum<\/a><\/em>\u2019s conference featured a debate about the deglobalisation concept. Three driving forces were highlighted as, supposedly, dismantle the order that has ruled the planet since, at least, the fall of the URSS. The first one is the \u201cpolycrisis\u201d, a term popularised by historian Adam Tooze<\/a>. Energy crisis, global warming, droughts, wars, pandemics, inflation: polycrisis describes a world where massive disruptions accumulate and overlap each another, interacting between themselves in unforeseen and unexpected ways. Predictably, the first effect of a world in polycrisis is the disorientation of the people who lives in it. There is no single cause or linear explanation to stop crisis; there is neither a horizon nor a solution that can offer a stability. Quite the contrary: today\u2019s world invites us to assume that continuous disruption is the only way to be. The second deglobalisation\u2019s driving force is what analyst Ian Bremmer<\/a> defined as a geopolitical recession. That is, a moment when global institutions no longer show the balance of existing power, and thus lack the legitimacy and effective capacity to mediate or propose solutions to conflicts. Bremmer points out three dynamics that aggravate these global power imbalances: the internal contradictions of the Chinese model; a socially and politically fractured United States; and the emergence of Russia as a rebellious power, determined to dynamite the global correlation of forces. The third driving force is the technological factor. On the one hand, the technical and economic development of emerging economies would cause them to lose the competitive advantage derived from the lower costs of their labour force; globalised capital would progressively run out of room for valorisation. On the other hand, technology itself has become a fundamental battleground in the struggle for global hegemony, as evidenced by the U.S-China chip war<\/a>, where Taiwan is at the centre of everything as the world’s leading manufacturer. The author of the article, therefore, asks whether the crisis of globalisation is irreversible and states that the accumulation of crises and geopolitical tensions is undoubtedly interfering with the logic of the world economic system as it has functioned over the last 30 years. In this sense, Tooze draws the picture of a “polycentric globalization”: a more unstable and conflictive world, with several separate spheres competing to reorder it under different regional security umbrellas. In reality, the diagnosis is not much different from that enunciated by the French philosopher Bruno Latour: the global dream of modernity, or the modern dream of the global, is no longer a realistic political horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On sustainability and climate change, in Open Democracy<\/a><\/em>, Paul Rogers claims that the funder of Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab, has long wanted it to be a platform for examining wide global issues, even though there are more discussions about detailed and specific issues. Schwab himself has been critical about traditional shareholder capitalism and more interested in what it is called \u201cstakeholder responsibility\u201d or \u201cstakeholder capitalism\u201d which seeks to substitute the primacy of profitability and the shareholder reward with a wider concern for issues such as climate change and economic marginalisation. Still, Rogers reports that there is little evidence that this transformation is in perspective for the elite that met in Davos days ago, and points out two blatant examples. The first one has a relation with one of the few achievements of the COP26 climate summit: the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)<\/a>, a group of 450 organizations from 45 countries with assets over 130 billion dollars. Its goal was for members to put together their inversions to help limit the rising of global temperature to 1.5\u00baC. However, indications over the past year reveal few changes in the behaviour. As can be read in Reclaim Finance<\/a>, among banks that are part of the GFANZ, 56 of the world\u2019s biggest banks have invested 270.000 million dollars in fossil fuel corporations, while the main 58 members of the asset management grouping within GFANZ retain 847.000 million dollars in assets in fossil fuel corporations. The second example is the confirmation of an old suspicion that fossil fuel companies have known for decades by their investigators that que climate change is directly related to their activities. A new study<\/a> by Harvard University and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reveals that scientists at Exxon, the main fossil fuel corporation in the world, were accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards. They predicted an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions, close to matching what actually happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Economist<\/a><\/em> reflects on the current disorder in the world\u2019s health services, which are about to collapse at any time since the pandemic began to spread. Unlike unemployment or GDP, there are few similar and updated statistics about the sanitary insistence in different countries but The Economist has located the statistics by concrete countries, regions and even hospitals to draw the panoramic of what is happening. The results indicate that patients, doctors and nurses have not escaped the worst pandemic effects. The forces that are producing this chaos are common worldwide and linked to a shared pandemic experience. It could also be, if so in short-time, that it will be impossible for governments to control them. On the other hand, the problems faced by health systems are not due to the lack of money. Much of the rise on expenses have been assigned to combat COVID, such as testing and screening, as well as the purchase of vaccines. Perhaps the real problem is not the number of healthcare workers, but the efficiency of the work done. The real output in the U.S. hospital and healthcare sector, for example, it only exceeds the 3.9% above the pre-pandemic rate, while the output of the economy together has increased 6.4%. In other words, hospitals do more with less resources. Even though the fall in productivity is a phenomenon that affects the economy, healthcare services are under additional pressure. Meanwhile, many health workers feel mistreated after three exhausting years. Even though the productivity has declined, it is not enough to explain the collapse of healthcare. This indicates that the real explanation for the collapse lies on other side of the coin: the abuse in demand. Everything indicates that, after the end of confinements, people need more medical help than ever. Part of it has to do with immunity. Population has lived two years without exposure to any pathogen. I this time, endemic pathogens such as respiratory syncytial virus have thrive. Still, the pandemic has also suppress other illnesses that are now being diagnosed. In 2020-2021, many people delayed treatment research for fear of catching COVID, or because hospitals were closed to non-COVID illnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, The Conversation<\/a><\/em> asked five experts in new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) about the major topics of debate generated by the rising impact on people\u2019s daily lives. From steam power and electricity to computers and Internet, the technological advances have always had important consequences in labour markets, causing the disappearance of some jobs and the creation of others. These experts state that AI is still an incorrect term, as the most intelligent systems do not yet  know anything by themselves, but technology has reached an inflection point that is about to affect new workplaces, such as artists and knowledge workers. Specifically, the emergence of big language models (AI systems that are trained with large amounts of text) means that these computers are able to produce a written language that sounds human, and turn descriptive sentences into realistic images. It is within this context, that these AI researchers discuss how great linguistic models can affect artists and knowledge workers and how, as technology is far from perfect, this raises a range of problems, from misinformation to plagiarism, that affect workers. Finally, technologic leaps bring us to new skills and, as with many technological advances, the way people interact with the world will change in the era of widely accessible AI models. The question is whether society will benefit from this moment to advance in equity or to worsen inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illustration: Julio Villani. Th\u00e9or\u00e8me de la d\u00e9mesure, 2013<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ada Ailin Brito and Marc Espigares, trainees at the CETC, participated in this issue of Diari de les idees<\/em><\/sub>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new edition of Diari de les Idees highlights the agreement reached to supply armoured vehicles to Ukraine despite Germany\u2019s initial reluctance; the worrying situation in the Sahel and the collapse of the party system and democracy in Peru; the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the European arrest warrants issued by Judge Llarena against Carles Puigdemont and the other exiles; the debates that have taken place at Davos (the World Economic Forum) on the concept of deglobalisation; and the growing impact of new technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence on people’s daily lives. On global matters,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":76602,"template":"","category_newspaper":[563],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-62578","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-563"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiari de les idees 76 – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-76\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diari de les idees 76 – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The new edition of Diari de les Idees highlights the agreement reached to supply armoured vehicles to Ukraine despite Germany\u2019s initial reluctance; the worrying situation in the Sahel and the collapse of the party system and democracy in Peru; the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the European arrest warrants issued by Judge Llarena against Carles Puigdemont and the other exiles; the debates that have taken place at Davos (the World Economic Forum) on the concept of deglobalisation; and the growing impact of new technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence on people’s daily lives. 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