<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - moral]]> 10 <![CDATA[The moral lessons of La Rochefoucauld]]>

At the same time as Pascal, Duke François de La Rochefoucauld wrote his moral reflections or maxims, but with a very different character, since while Pascal's thoughts dealt with religion and theology, La Rochefoucauld's maxims expressed a disbelieving view of human nature with a strong moral charge, but without any didactic intention.

]]> <![CDATA[Artificial cunning]]> Although artificial intelligence has only recently burst into our lives, the imprint it's beginning to have on it continues to grow. A little over a year ago, I was trying to interact with it to see how creative it was or how good its ideas were when it came to improving—or more aesthetically shaping—a story, and all it gave me were clichés and, let's say, low-level plot twists. The truth is, it must have some kind of limitation, not only creative but—let's put it this way—moral: it never conceives of one character killing another, for example, or of certain things happening that might undermine a fussy and cowardly cautious value system. As if conceiving "bad ideas" could be socially harmful, even if you specify that it's all fiction. Creatively, the machine is very good at reproducing and falsifying what exists, but not at creating new things. It's like those singers—or comedians—who go on television to imitate others, who can do it well and with a good voice, but who are then incapable of creating their own style, and we're not even talking about composing a song or inventing a good joke. He appropriates the work of painters and illustrators quite successfully—controversy arose when the option of transforming any image into a Miyazaki drawing was offered, for example… To tell the truth, however, there are other things he's starting to do that are worth considering: you can give him a literary text and he'll apparently assess its merits and demerits, although rather than providing useful and lucid literary criticism, he limits himself to pointing out four imponderables or advising you of improvements that don't commit to anything. He's still a terrible writing teacher. It seems to function like that mythical manual that was titled: How to talk about books you haven't read, by Pierre Bayard.

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