The Human Factor

Cybersecurity experts have a habit of insisting that, over and above the ever-increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, the human factor is the main problem they face. More often than not, it is a person's decision to open an email, forward a WhatsApp message, enter a website, download a file or click on a link that triggers the corporate apocalypse. According to CrowdStrike's 2021 report on cybersecurity (https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/reports/global-threat-report-es/ ), when addressing the problem of phishing, "The psychological underpinning of many of these [social engineering] techniques is to tap into human emotions and behaviour, the most useful of which are greed, curiosity, fear and the desire to help".

The issue is neither new nor limited to cybersecurity. In a less serious tone than that of computer attacks, the expression "PEBKAC bug", allowed computer technicians to point to the laymen of processors, "OS" and "RAM" as the absolute culprits of the problem for which they had dared to call them. PEBKAC stands for "there is a problem between the keyboard and the chair", and who occupies the space between the keyboard and the chair - you do! The biggest problem of human beings is, in general, the very existence of human beings. It is the decisions made by others, the opinions and actions of others, their knowledge or lack of it, that have led to disastrous events throughout history that have had nothing to do with "acts of God", as some insurers like to call natural disasters. Human decisions, arrogance, culture (or lack thereof), beliefs and, as the CrowdStrike report reminds us, greed, curiosity, fear or good intentions, are what drive progress, wars, environmental disasters, misery and so much else.

Perhaps for this reason, or because they are part of the problem, human beings have sought ways of not assuming their own responsibilities, of not taking responsibility for the problems they cause. The most recent model we have invented as a "disclaimer" is AI, and yet things are not working out as we had hoped. As with mirrors, the development of AI has forced us to look at ourselves more than we already do to understand how we function in the misguided attempt to make machines work better, to get them to do what we are unable to do for ourselves. Thus, the cases of transferring human bias to machines in AI programming expose the extent to which we are steeped in biases and distortions in the way we see the world and know ourselves.

We want machines to behave with the ethics we lack, to make infallible decisions based on our own history of mistakes, to know right from wrong when we do not yet know the mechanisms by which we develop that knowledge, to do the right thing when we are unable to identify what is best for everyone. We delude ourselves by proclaiming that machines will make the world a better place, that they will achieve what we have not been able to do for millennia, that they will put an end to inequality, poverty and hunger, and we let time go by playing with neuroprocessors, silicon and machine learning, because we continue to convince ourselves that the solution to our problems lies outside us. Somehow the conclusion is that if the human factor is the cause of the problems, removing it entirely from decision-making is the panacea that will save us. Frankly, in some cases there will be those who believe with all their good intentions that this is so, in other cases it is pure and simple ambition, the expectation of cold, lucrative business, that allows the redeeming role of the machine to seep into the minds of those who expect everything to change because, quite simply, the only way the world will change is if the human changes, not the machines, the human. Simply put, the only way the world will be better is if human beings, if we, are better people; not better engineers, not better economists, not better lawyers, not better doctors, not better bankers, not better artists, not better politicians. ... just better people.

Fátima Gordillo