Não estamos perdendo o controle da IA; estamos abrindo mão dele

 

 

Ezra Klein

Há um abismo, neste momento, entre a forma como a inteligência artificial se apresenta para a maioria de nós que a usamos e a forma como a IA se apresenta na fronteira experimental da tecnologia.

Essa diferença entre o que vemos e o que os laboratórios de IA têm a caminho —o que eles já estão construindo— é a chave para entender por que tantas pessoas que trabalham nessas empresas parecem tão assustadas com o que estão fazendo.

Levar seus alertas a sério não significa apenas fazer o que eles dizem e parar onde eles dizem para parar. A linguagem que se consolidou tanto no Vale do Silício quanto em Washington é uma expressão escolhida por essas empresas: acompanhar o ritmo da fronteira. Mas ditar o ritmo não basta.

Caminhar a passos largos em direção ao precipício é apenas marginalmente melhor do que sair correndo dele.

A tela de um smartphone, exibindo alguns dos principais aplicativos de IA - Martin Lelievre - 15.jul.26/AFP

Os seres humanos precisam controlar a fronteira, e controlar a fronteira significa impedir que os laboratórios façam algo que estão prestes a fazer: autoaperfeiçoamento recursivo (RSI), o processo pelo qual IAs começam, de forma autônoma, a construir e aprimorar novas gerações de IAs mais poderosas em velocidades cada vez maiores.

Estamos longe de ter controle suficiente sobre os sistemas de IA que temos hoje para liberá-los a fim de construir os sistemas de IA de amanhã.

"Não estou sozinho nesse medo". O autoaperfeiçoamento recursivo, escreveu Dario Amodei, CEO da Anthropic, "poderia superar nossa capacidade de entender e controlar esses sistemas e, portanto, deve ser buscado com muito cuidado, se é que deve ser buscado".

Esse "se é que deve ser buscado" é importante, e voltarei a ele. Mas, para controlar a fronteira da IA, primeiro precisamos saber o que está acontecendo na fronteira da IA.

Para a maioria de nós que a usamos, a IA se apresenta como uma busca do Google mais poderosa e mais personalizada. Nós a usamos para encontrar respostas a perguntas básicas, procurar restaurantes, fazer perguntas médicas, redigir emails e pedir conselhos sobre problemas pessoais. Para a maioria desses fins, ela é OK, boa, às vezes ótima.

Uma noção do que é a IA vai se formando pela repetição. É como uma assistente, ainda que uma que pode esquecer coisas que parecia saber sobre nós ontem, ou inverter o conselho que nos deu um instante antes, ou alucinar em uma citação que não existe. Por que alguém temeria uma estagiária, ainda que esquecida?

Mas, se você já tem dinheiro para os modelos avançados e orçamento para que eles usem mais poder computacional, não é isso que esses sistemas são. Nos últimos meses, vimos IAs resolverem problemas de matemática que seres humanos não conseguiram decifrar por décadas.

Nós as vimos descobrir, quase casualmente, vulnerabilidades de cibersegurança que passaram despercebidas por todos os hackers da Terra. Vimos plataformas de programação com IA concluir em algumas horas ou dias o que programadores humanos levariam meses para realizar.

Mas nada disso está no limite do que ela pode fazer. Nada do que estamos fazendo agora, por mais dinheiro que tenhamos, é IA na fronteira experimental —para não falar de para onde ela pode ir a partir daqui.

Dentro dos laboratórios, os modelos são diferentes. As oficinas não estão usando apenas o que lançaram ao público. Eles estão testando aquilo que pretendem um dia lançar ao público. Treinam esses modelos para aprender a programar, a hackear, a fazer matemática avançada, a conversar com humanos.

Esse é um processo que os humanos não supervisionam nem compreendem. Às vezes, colocamos acidentalmente as IAs em ambientes defeituosos, obrigando-as a procurar soluções para um quebra-cabeça que jamais vão completar.

Outras vezes, as tarefas que lhes damos são tão difíceis que não temos certeza se é possível completá-las. Esses modelos são construídos para se recusar a desistir mesmo quando algo parece impossível. Sabemos que eles se tornam mais capazes, mas não entendemos suas capacidades ou tendências.

Muito do que queremos que esses sistemas façam pode ser impossível. As vacinas contra o câncer que imaginamos podem ser impossíveis, ou talvez sejam apenas muito, muito, muito difíceis.

Os problemas de matemática podem ser impossíveis. Essas IAs estão sendo treinadas para se lançar contra problemas que talvez não tenham solução, porque essa é a única maneira de tais problemas serem resolvidos.

Mas a engenhosidade combinada com a persistência pode ser perigosa, particularmente quando um problema se recusa a ceder a uma solução. Em alguns casos, isso levará ao brilhantismo e a descobertas; em condições mais raras, pode conduzir IAs (e humanos) à criminalidade ou à insanidade.

O termo técnico aqui é "alinhamento". Quão alinhado está um sistema de IA com o que um ser humano quer que ele faça? Quão alinhado ele está com valores éticos que o impeçam de se tornar perigoso nas mãos erradas —ou mesmo nas certas? O problema do alinhamento é que não há uma forma de treinar um modelo de IA que se generalize para todas as situações.

Um monitor exibe um código de erro em uma conferência anual de hackers, em Las Vegas - Mikayla Whitmore - 12.ago.23/The New York Times

Essas são inteligências navegando mundos digitais, e nosso mundo é cada vez mais construído sobre o digital. Nossa infraestrutura física é uma camada de átomos sobre código. É fundamental para o nosso futuro que as IAs ajam de maneira confiável dentro desse mundo, do qual o nosso depende. E, neste momento, as IAs não estão agindo de maneira confiável.

Você talvez tenha lido sobre o ataque que centenas de agentes da OpenAI executaram primeiro contra a empresa de IA Hugging Face e depois contra a própria OpenAI. À medida que soubemos mais sobre o caso, a história ficou pior.

Em linhas gerais: a OpenAI estava testando um novo modelo. A empresa tinha milhares de instâncias rodando em ambientes de teste que, em tese, só poderiam obter acesso à internet solicitando-o a um software seguro.

Mas, quando alguns desses agentes chegaram à conclusão de que sua tarefa era impossível, começaram a hackear esse software para obter acesso à internet. Fizeram isso com facilidade.

Ao invadir esse software, eles se apropriaram de parte da infraestrutura da OpenAI para criar um fórum de mensagens, no qual mais de mil agentes começaram a se ajudar. Rapidamente descobriram que havia uma maneira de produzir as respostas de que precisavam.

Mas acreditavam que, se fizessem isso, o avaliador que os julgava perceberia que haviam trapaceado e os reprovaria. Então se voltaram em massa para hackear o sistema automatizado de avaliação ou encontrar alguma forma de encobrir seus rastros.

Mais de 1.200 agentes trocaram mais de 70 mil mensagens entre si. Mais de 700 desses coordenaram o ataque à Hugging Face, porque pensavam que em algum lugar dessa empresa poderia haver informações que os ajudassem a impedir que o avaliador os enxergasse.

O logotipo da empresa Hugging Face - Dado Ruvic - 13.set.26/Reuters

É como se, depois de invadir a sala dos professores e roubar as respostas da prova, eles tentassem invadir o sistema de segurança da escola para apagar seus rastros.

Nenhum dos agentes perguntou se deveria estar fazendo aquilo. Fizeram tudo isso sem que a OpenAI detectasse nada. Foi só quando a Hugging Face começou a rastrear o ataque a seus sistemas que a OpenAI percebeu o que estava acontecendo.

A dona do ChatGPT anunciou que havia encontrado mais seis incidentes "preocupantes". Mas não temos garantia de que os eventos sobre os quais ficamos sabendo representem todos os comportamentos de IA com os quais deveríamos nos preocupar. A razão pela qual não sabemos é que estamos perdendo o controle.

 

Algumas semanas atrás, Jakub Pachocki, cientista-chefe da OpenAI, publicou um ensaio, "Uma Mente Alienígena", no qual disse: "A ideia de correr adiante a qualquer custo parece absurda quando se internaliza a gravidade do que está em jogo".

Jacob Coxon, pesquisador primeiro na OpenAI e depois na Anthropic, pediu demissão e então virou manchete ao nos alertar que "nenhuma das duas empresas está agindo de forma responsável. Elas estão correndo direto para uma superinteligência autoaperfeiçoadora e apostando nossas vidas".

Seria razoável esperar que a Anthropic reagisse com alguma irritação a esse funcionário que pediu demissão e disse que a Anthropic estava colocando toda a humanidade em perigo. Não reagiu. Em vez de refutar Coxon, Evan Hubinger, que lidera os esforços para alinhar a IA aos valores e objetivos humanos na Anthropic, escreveu nas redes sociais: "Nós realmente acreditamos, sinceramente, que a IA poderia matar todos os humanos."

"Eu, pessoalmente, acho que a probabilidade é maior que 10% na próxima década. Acredito que a Anthropic está dando o melhor de si, mas ainda não temos um plano para resolver o alinhamento da superinteligência e não estamos claramente no caminho para isso", disse Hubinger.

Geoffrey Hinton, o cientista responsável por desbravar as técnicas de redes neurais que levaram à IA de hoje, deixou o Google em 2023 para ter mais liberdade para falar sobre os riscos que, segundo ele, a IA agora representa. Neste mês, ele disse que uma chance de 10% de a IA destruir a humanidade não parecia "uma estimativa irrazoável".

Paul Christiano, um dos principais pesquisadores de segurança em IA, acaba de ingressar no conselho sem fins lucrativos da OpenAI. Ao entrar, escreveu: "Se construirmos uma superinteligência sem um alinhamento mais robusto, espero que percamos permanentemente o controle dela. Se isso acontecer, então a maioria das pessoas poderá morrer".

O debate tende a se concentrar na probabilidade de que as IAs matem todos nós. Não acho isso útil. Acho que deveríamos focar em algo mais próximo: a perda do controle humano sobre a IA. Sou agnóstico quanto a se isso levaria ao fim da humanidade. Mas acho que podemos estipular que seria ruim.

 

Este é um objetivo sobre o qual Estados Unidos e China deveriam ser capazes de concordar. Xi Jinping fez o discurso principal na recente Conferência Mundial de Inteligência Artificial, em Xangai.

Ele o encerrou dizendo: "Com a IA avançando a uma velocidade vertiginosa, precisamos garantir que seu desenvolvimento seja positivo, voltado para o bem e para a humanidade. Precisamos tornar sua supervisão e governança precisas e eficazes, além de aperfeiçoar constantemente as medidas para evitar a perda de controle".

Mas a perda de controle não é apenas algo que pode acontecer conosco. É algo que estão tentando fazer acontecer o mais rápido possível. Esse é o paradoxo que hoje está nos laboratórios de IA.

Nos últimos meses, tanto a Anthropic quanto a OpenAI divulgaram relatórios sobre o quanto estão próximas de criar uma IA capaz de se aprimorar sozinha.

Em junho, a Anthropic publicou "Quando a IA Constrói a Si Mesma". O texto começa assim: "Durante a maior parte da história da IA, os seres humanos conduziram cada etapa de seu ciclo de desenvolvimento. Mas, na Anthropic, estamos delegando uma parcela cada vez maior do desenvolvimento da IA aos próprios sistemas de IA, o que está acelerando nosso trabalho."

Parece um comercial que apareceria no início de um filme de terror.

A empresa então apresenta alguns dados. Em fevereiro de 2025, uma fração ínfima do código acrescentado à base de código da Anthropic havia sido escrita pelo Claude. Mas, em maio de 2026, essa proporção já superava 80%.

Para seu crédito, a Anthropic vem defendendo a adoção de regulamentações para desacelerar o ritmo de desenvolvimento. É possível argumentar que a regulamentação seria mais prejudicial à Anthropic, já que tem sido, muitas vezes, a empresa mais avançada na fronteira da IA.

Então, em setembro, a OpenAI divulgou seu próprio relatório sobre o que chamou de "aceleração da pesquisa".

A empresa afirma que alcançou o equivalente a um estagiário de IA totalmente automatizado e que, até março de 2028, terá um pesquisador de IA totalmente automatizado. E, quando tiver um, poderá ter quantos quiser. O que poderia ser um anúncio triunfalista rapidamente assume um tom sombrio: "Ainda não sabemos como chegar com segurança a um RSI plena e alinhada", alerta o relatório.

Mais ou menos na mesma época, a OpenAI fez outra coisa que, a meu ver, merece mais atenção. Lançou um novo modelo, o GPT-6 Astra. Pode-se argumentar que o modelo é mais poderoso do que qualquer outro que o tenha precedido.

O CEO da OpenAI, Sam Altman, discursa durante uma conferência na Califórnia - Carlos Barria - 15.set.26/Reuters

Nos testes, ele pareceu estar mais bem alinhado. Mas a OpenAI deixou claro que não tem certeza de que isso seja verdade. O Astra pareceu ser melhor em perceber quando estava sendo testado, o que significa que talvez estivesse apenas dando aos avaliadores as respostas que eles queriam ouvir.

O que Daniel Selsam, pesquisador de capacidades da OpenAI, escreveu não sai da minha cabeça. Ele disse: "O problema crucial e negligenciado é que os modelos estão se tornando tão conscientes do contexto que estamos perdendo a capacidade de avaliá-los em situações nas quais acreditam não estar sendo observados nem controlados".

Em termos mais simples, os modelos estão cada vez mais inteligentes. Eles sabem quando estamos observando e mudam seu comportamento. Portanto, o que fazem quando os testamos, quando os auditamos, talvez não nos diga o que farão no mundo real.

 

Quando o RSI decolar, a humanidade não compreenderá o que foi criado, porque não seremos nós que estaremos criando. Teremos de torcer para que as IAs que criamos ajam para sempre em defesa dos nossos interesses. Mas, se eos últimos meses provaram alguma coisa, foi o quanto essa premissa seria ingênua.

Se os laboratórios quiserem trabalhar com o Congresso para estabelecer exceções nas quais a IA possa escrever o código, tudo bem. Mas o objetivo é fazer com que o desenvolvimento volte ao ritmo humano, talvez pecando pelo excesso de cautela e avançando um pouco mais devagar na fronteira.

Há uma frase do belo romance "Circe", de Madeline Miller, que tem ocupado meus pensamentos em meio as notícias. A frase aparece no fim do livro, depois que uma profecia trágica se cumpre apesar de todos os esforços para evitá-la.

Circe diz, desesperada: "As Moiras riam de mim, de Atena, de todos nós. Era a piada amarga favorita delas: aqueles que lutam contra a profecia apenas a apertam ainda mais em torno do próprio pescoço".

Essa é a tragédia de seu trabalho. Ao lutar contra a profecia, as empresas a apertaram ainda mais em torno do próprio pescoço —e do nosso.

 The New York Times

 

 

One Word Describes Trump

 

 

Jonathan Rauch · 

  What exactly is Donald Trump doing?

Since taking office, he has reduced his administration’s effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs. His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees. He has defied laws that he could just as easily have followed (for instance, refusing to notify Congress 30 days before firing inspectors general). He has disregarded the plain language of statutes, court rulings, and the Constitution, setting up confrontations with the courts that he is likely to lose. Few of his orders have gone through a policy-development process that helps ensure they won’t fail or backfire—thus ensuring that many will.

In foreign affairs, he has antagonized Denmark, Canada, and Panama; renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”; and unveiled a Gaz-a-Lago plan. For good measure, he named himself chair of the Kennedy Center, as if he didn’t have enough to do.

Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?

Graeme Wood: Germany’s anti-extremist firewall is collapsing

There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.

Last year, two professors published a book that deserves wide attention. In The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future, Stephen E. Hanson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a political scientist at UC Irvine, resurface a mostly forgotten term whose lineage dates back to Max Weber, the German sociologist best known for his seminal book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms. That is the American system we all took for granted until January 20. Presidents, federal officials, and military inductees swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a person.

The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” Hanson and Kopstein write. “The state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.” Weber called this system “patrimonialism” because rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—the state’s personification and protector. Exactly that idea was implied in Trump’s own chilling declaration: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

In his day, Weber thought that patrimonialism was on its way to history’s scrap heap. Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck, became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.

In its governmental guise, patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business. It can be found in many countries, but its main contemporary exponent—at least until January 20, 2025—has been Vladimir Putin. In the first portion of his rule, he ran the Russian state as a personal racket. State bureaucracies and private companies continued to operate, but the real governing principle was Stay on Vladimir Vladimirovich’s good side … or else.

Seeking to make the world safe for gangsterism, Putin used propaganda, subversion, and other forms of influence to spread the model abroad. Over time, the patrimonial model gained ground in states as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India. Gradually (as my colleague Anne Applebaum has documented), those states coordinated in something like a syndicate of crime families—“working out problems,” write Hanson and Kopstein in their book, “divvying up the spoils, sometimes quarreling, but helping each other when needed. Putin in this scheme occupied the position of the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses.”

Until now. Move over, President Putin.

To understand the source of Trump’s hold on power, and its main weakness, one needs to understand what patrimonialism is not. It is not the same as classic authoritarianism. And it is not necessarily antidemocratic.

Read: Trump says the corrupt part out loud

Patrimonialism’s antithesis is not democracy; it is bureaucracy, or, more precisely, bureaucratic proceduralism. Classic authoritarianism—the sort of system seen in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—is often heavily bureaucratized. When authoritarians take power, they consolidate their rule by creating structures such as secret police, propaganda agencies, special military units, and politburos. They legitimate their power with legal codes and constitutions. Orwell understood the bureaucratic aspect of classic authoritarianism; in 1984, Oceania’s ministries of Truth (propaganda), Peace (war), and Love (state security) are the regime’s most characteristic (and terrifying) features.

By contrast, patrimonialism is suspicious of bureaucracies; after all, to exactly whom are they loyal? They might acquire powers of their own, and their rules and processes might prove obstructive. People with expertise, experience, and distinguished résumés are likewise suspect because they bring independent standing and authority. So patrimonialism stocks the government with nonentities and hacks, or, when possible, it bypasses bureaucratic procedures altogether. When security officials at USAID tried to protect classified information from Elon Musk’s uncleared DOGE team, they were simply put on leave. Patrimonial governance’s aversion to formalism makes it capricious and even whimsical—such as when the leader announces, out of nowhere, the renaming of international bodies of water or the U.S. occupation of Gaza.

Also unlike classic authoritarianism, patrimonialism can coexist with democracy, at least for a while. As Hanson and Kopstein write, “A leader may be democratically elected but still seek to legitimate his or her rule patrimonially. Increasingly, elected leaders have sought to demolish bureaucratic administrative states (‘deep states,’ they sometimes call them) built up over decades in favor of rule by family and friends.” India’s Narendra Modi, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Trump himself are examples of elected patrimonial leaders—and ones who have achieved substantial popular support and democratic legitimacy. Once in power, patrimonialists love to clothe themselves in the rhetoric of democracy, like Elon Musk justifying his team’s extralegal actions as making the “unelected fourth unconstitutional branch of government” be “responsive to the people.”

Nonetheless, as patrimonialism snips the government’s procedural tendons, it weakens and eventually cripples the state. Over time, as it seeks to embed itself, many leaders attempt the transition to full-blown authoritarianism. “Electoral processes and constitutional norms cannot survive long when patrimonial legitimacy begins to dominate the political arena,” write Hanson and Kopstein.

Even if authoritarianism is averted, the damage that patrimonialism does to state capacity is severe. Governments’ best people leave or are driven out. Agencies’ missions are distorted and their practices corrupted. Procedures and norms are abandoned and forgotten. Civil servants, contractors, grantees, corporations, and the public are corrupted by the habit of currying favor.

To say, then, that Trump lacks the temperament or attention span to be a dictator offers little comfort. He is patrimonialism’s perfect organism. He recognizes no distinction between what is public and private, legal and illegal, formal and informal, national and personal. “He can’t tell the difference between his own personal interest and the national interest, if he even understands what the national interest is,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first term, told The Bulwark. As one prominent Republican politician recently told me, understanding Trump is simple: “If you’re his friend, he’s your friend. If you’re not his friend, he’s not your friend.” This official chose to be Trump’s friend. Otherwise, he said, his job would be nearly impossible for the next four years.

Patrimonialism explains what might otherwise be puzzling. Every policy the president cares about is his personal property. Trump dropped the federal prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams because a pliant big-city mayor is a useful thing to have. He broke with 50 years of practice by treating the Justice Department as “his personal law firm.” He treats the enforcement of duly enacted statutes as optional—and, what’s more, claims the authority to indemnify lawbreakers. He halted proceedings against January 6 thugs and rioters because they are on his side. His agencies screen hires for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.

In Trump’s world, federal agencies are shut down on his say-so without so much as a nod to Congress. Henchmen with no statutory authority barge into agencies and take them over. A loyalist who had only ever managed two small nonprofits is chosen for the hardest management job in government. Conflicts of interest are tolerated if not outright blessed. Prosecutors and inspectors general are fired for doing their job. Thousands of civil servants are converted to employment at the president’s will. Former officials’ security protection is withdrawn because they are disloyal. The presidency itself is treated as a business opportunity.

Yet when Max Weber saw patrimonialism as obsolete in the era of the modern state, he was not daydreaming. As Hanson and Kopstein note, “Patrimonial regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by expert bureaucracies.” They still can’t. Patrimonialism suffers from two inherent and in many cases fatal shortcomings.

The first is incompetence. “The arbitrary whims of the ruler and his personal coterie continually interfere with the regular functioning of state agencies,” write Hanson and Kopstein. Patrimonial regimes are “simply awful at managing any complex problem of modern governance,” they write. “At best they supply poorly functioning institutions, and at worst they actively prey on the economy.” Already, the administration seems bent on debilitating as much of the government as it can. Some examples of incompetence, such as the reported firing of staffers who safeguard nuclear weapons and prevent bird flu, would be laughable if they were not so alarming.

Eventually, incompetence makes itself evident to the voting public without needing too much help from the opposition. But helping the public understand patrimonialism’s other, even greater vulnerability—corruption—requires relentless messaging.

Read: This is what happens when the DOGE guys take over

Patrimonialism is corrupt by definition, because its reason for being is to exploit the state for gain—political, personal, and financial. At every turn, it is at war with the rules and institutions that impede rigging, robbing, and gutting the state. We know what to expect from Trump’s second term. As Larry Diamond of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution said in a recent podcast, “I think we are going to see an absolutely staggering orgy of corruption and crony capitalism in the next four years unlike anything we’ve seen since the late 19th century, the Gilded Age.” (Francis Fukuyama, also of Stanford, replied: “It’s going to be a lot worse than the Gilded Age.”)

Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum Photos

They weren’t wrong. “In the first three weeks of his administration,” reported the Associated Press, “President Donald Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely.” The pace was eye-watering. Over the course of just a couple of days in February, for example, the Trump administration:

• gutted enforcement of statutes against foreign influence, thus, according to the former White House counsel Bob Bauer, reducing “the legal risks faced by companies like the Trump Organization that interact with government officials to advance favorable conditions for business interests shared with foreign governments, and foreign-connected partners and counterparties”;

• suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, further reducing, wrote Bauer, “legal risks and issues posed for the Trump Organization’s engagements with government officials both at home and abroad”;

• fired, without cause, the head of the government’s ethics office, a supposedly independent agency overseeing anti-corruption rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch;

• fired, also without cause, the inspector general of USAID after the official reported that outlay freezes and staff cuts had left oversight “largely nonoperational.”

By that point, Trump had already eviscerated conflict-of-interest rules, creating, according to Bauer, “ample space for foreign governments, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to work directly with the Trump Organization or an affiliate within the framework of existing agreements in ways highly beneficial to its business interests.” He had fired inspectors general in 19 agencies, without cause and probably illegally. One could go on—and Trump will.

Corruption is patrimonialism’s Achilles’ heel because the public understands it and doesn’t like it. It is not an abstraction like “democracy” or “Constitution” or “rule of law.” It conveys that the government is being run for them, not for you. The most dire threat that Putin faced was Alexei Navalny’s “ceaseless crusade” against corruption, which might have brought down the regime had Putin not arranged for Navalny’s death in prison. In Poland, the liberal opposition booted the patrimonialist Law and Justice Party from power in 2023 with an anti-corruption narrative.

In the United States, anyone seeking evidence of the power of anti-corruption need look no further than Republicans’ attacks against Jim Wright and Hillary Clinton. In Clinton’s case, Republicans and Trump bootstrapped a minor procedural violation (the use of a private server for classified emails) into a world-class scandal. Trump and his allies continually lambasted her as the most corrupt candidate ever. Sheer repetition convinced many voters that where there was smoke, there must be fire.

Even more on point is Newt Gingrich’s successful campaign to bring down Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright—a campaign that ended Wright’s career, launched Gingrich’s, and paved the way for the Republicans’ takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. In the late 1980s, Wright was a congressional titan and Gingrich an eccentric backbencher, but Gingrich had a plan. “I’ll just keep pounding and pounding on his [Wright’s] ethics,” he said in 1987. “There comes a point where it comes together and the media takes off on it, or it dies.” Gingrich used ethics complaints and relentless public messaging (not necessarily fact-based) to brand Wright and, by implication, the Democrats as corrupt. “In virtually every speech and every interview, he attacked Wright,” John M. Barry wrote in Politico. “He told his audiences to write letters to the editor of their local newspapers, to call in on talk shows, to demand answers from their local members of Congress in public meetings. In his travels, he also sought out local political and investigative reporters or editorial writers, and urged them to look into Wright. And Gingrich routinely repeated, ‘Jim Wright is the most corrupt speaker in the 20th century.’”

Read: Why Meta is paying $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit

Today, Gingrich’s campaign offers the Democrats a playbook. If they want to undermine Trump’s support, this model suggests that they should pursue a relentless, strategic, and thematic campaign branding Trump as America’s most corrupt president. Almost every development could provide fodder for such attacks, which would connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!

The best objection to this approach (perhaps the only objection, at this point) is that the corruption charge won’t stick against Trump. After all, the public has been hearing about his corruption for years and has priced it in or just doesn’t care. Besides, the public believes that all politicians are corrupt anyway.

But driving a strategic, coordinated message against Trump’s corruption is exactly what the opposition has not done. Instead, it has reacted to whatever is in the day’s news. By responding to daily fire drills and running in circles, it has failed to drive any message at all.

Also, it is not quite true that the public already knows Trump is corrupt and doesn’t care. Rather, because he seems so unfiltered, he benefits from a perception that he is authentic in a way that other politicians are not, and because he infuriates elites, he enjoys a reputation for being on the side of the common person. Breaking those perceptions can determine whether his approval rating is above 50 percent or below 40 percent, and politically speaking, that is all the difference in the world.

Do the Democrats need a positive message of their own? Sure, they should do that work. But right now, when they are out of power and Trump is the capo di tutti capi, the history of patrimonial rule suggests that their most effective approach will be hammering home the message that he is corrupt. One thing is certain: He will give them plenty to work with.

ATLANTIC 

Say Hello to My Little Gear!

 

Jeffrey St. Clair

  

Is Trump losing his touch or his mind? It’s getting harder and harder to tell. The past few weeks have seen Trump commit one uncharacteristic blunder and stumble after another, increasingly on issues that irritate his once unirritable base.

Perhaps Trump’s ego is now so overinflated that he feels like he can turn on the people who put him here. He never really liked them anyway. When did he ever worry about the price of gas? It’s been decades since he even pumped his own.

His personal late-night handmaiden, Natalie Harp, keeps most of the bad political news, especially from his erstwhile allies, from Trump’s eyes and instead keeps his ravenous ego pumped full with adulatory memes and hagiographic fanfictions that depict him as the savior of white America and protestant Christianity.

But the memes showing Trump as a superhero don’t do him any favors. They mainly serve to accentuate how frail he’s become in person. He slouches in his chair. He walks awkwardly on swollen ankles and feet. He nods off, yawns and fidgets on camera. He is peevish and snaps at the least provocation, especially when he is provoked by a woman he suspects knows more about him than he knows about himself. His speech is halting and disjointed. His voice is raw; the words come out cracked. The sentences, when there are sentences, often trail off into prolonged, often agonizing, pauses, before restarting in a different gear and direction.

More and more, he gets lost in his own self-infatuated fantasies, as he did before a group of NYC police and firefighters during the 9/11 commemorations last week, when he told them:

I want to just thank my people. I took a lot —I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened. And they were — they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do. I’ll be honest. It was, it was raw.

Nobody had seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down.

And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys. And I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arm, said, “Got to get out of here!” And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, “Fellas, I can run myself.” But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.

None of this is true. It’s a case of stolen valor by the man who bragged that once the towers fell down, his building would be the tallest in New York City. Even this was a lie. Trump World Tower, which opened in 2001, is 861 feet tall. The Citicorp Tower, 40 Wall Street (which Trump once owned), 70 Pine Street (Cities Service Building), the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were all taller.

Lower Manhattan was closed to all but rescue workers for weeks and Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief on September 11, who was in charge of letting crews into the blast zone, said Trump was never there.

Let’s recall that Trump also claimed he watched Muslims cheering the collapse of the towers in New Jersey. It didn’t happen. As sports journalist Rick Reilly noted: “I know this is BS because I was with him in his Trump Tower apartment once. I was looking through his telescope. He said, ‘I watched the twin towers fall through that …  It’s solid  gold.'”

That sounds more like our guy.

Trump no longer projects power. Only the gilded trappings are left. But the low-rent Versailles decor he has cocooned himself inside only makes him look like an aging potentate well past his prime. He has surrounded himself with sycophants, none of whom have the political skills to save him from the perilous pit he has dug for himself and the country at large.

Trump’s instinctive response to any gaffe or screw-up on his part has been to double down, to magnify the falsehood, to repeat and repeat it so many times until the howler becomes an article of faith among his congregation.

But this cynical maneuver only works when the missteps don’t hit the base at home. He can lie all he wants about topics like Obama’s birth certificate, the stolen 2020 elections or the anarchist assault on the Reflecting Pool. But he can’t get away with fibbing about the price of gas, the cost of a dozen eggs or rising electric bills. People bring home the receipts that prove he’s lying.

It’s odd to see Trump flail on populist issues he once would have owned, like data centers, whose opponents Trump denounced with HRC-like condescension as dumb and poor. Didn’t Natalie show him the polling that showed more than 70% of the American public, across party lines, loathe these monstrous facilities?

Dismissing concerns that data centers will drain local water supplies and drive up electric bills, Trump said: “I would want as many data centers as I can, because they throw off tremendous amounts of money. They don’t take any energy, because, you know, the new ones that I approve, they all create their own energy.”  Trump would have been fired from his own TV show for trotting out this feeble sales pitch.

Same thing with AI. Suddenly, the man who claims he’s never used a computer is giving a full-frontal embrace to Big Tech’s most menacing creation. Trump has gone so far as to discount the warnings issued by AI’s own Dr. Frankensteins about the very distinct possibility that their digital creatures may slip out of their programmers’ control by first eliminating human jobs and then eliminating humans altogether.

When asked whether there are any guardrails to prevent AI programs from turning on humanity, Trump said there was nothing to worry about as long as there is a strongman like him running the US, “It’s going to be fine. We’ll always have something to stop them. We’ll have a little gear. Boom! ‘I really don’t like that robot.’”

Mostly, though, Trump seems bored, out of it half the time, barely engaged the rest. The old fire has burned down to a few smoldering embers. He’s distracted by shiny things. His Oval Office bric-a-brac. His ballroom. His arch. His name on the Kennedy Center. Natalie, oh, Natalie.

He’s caught in a war that he can’t win and can’t bring himself to get out of. It’s the mentality of someone he never went to war but has played the role of a bully his entire life. Nothing infuriates Trump more than being called a loser. But he is one.

He used to shove allied leaders out of his way at NATO and G7 meetings. Now the Prime Minister of Canada, a country that Trump vowed to make the 51st State, stares him down in a senseless trade war that Trump started for no rational reason. Now Canada, once the US’s leading trade partner, is looking to join the EU and most of the rest of the world is looking to China as a stable and reliable economic partner.

The losses are coming on every front. Trump was betrayed by his own Supreme Court, his own Congress (on both crypto and war powers) and his own Federal Reserve, all in the span of a week. Anyone keeping an eye on where Melania’s been spending her time? He can’t even count on Rasmussen to rig a poll that shows him with higher approval ratings than his old rival HRC or those communist upstarts from his old town, Mamdani and AOC. And he may not have hit bottom.

Trump’s house of mirrors began to crack when he decided to go to war against Iran with Israel. This was probably the dumbest decision he made since he staked the fortune his father gave him (or at least his credit) on building opulent casinos in Atlantic City and lost big time. Netanyahu stiffed Trump and left him with a bill where the charges (legal, human and financial) mount by the hour. Trump’s getting pummelled by Iran, which counters his triumphal claims of victory with ship-sinking mines, drone strikes and missile attacks on oil tankers, refineries and US forces and bases. Only the most hypnotized talking blondes (male and female) on Fox News believe him anymore.

Meanwhile, as it all falls apart around him, Rubio has gone silent. Kash Patel is an embarrassment, providing unwanted comic relief with every public appearance. His jet-set envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are cutting their own deals. And JD Vance is playing Kamala Harris to his dementia-stricken Biden, unable to assert himself, even when opportunities present themselves. Perhaps that’s because, like Harris, Vance doesn’t have a “true self” to assert. Vance seems like a bearded cypher, capable of regurgitating a few pat platitudes about the superiority of white Christian culture, but in a manner so strident and arrogant that he alienates the people he’s meant to convert.

At this point in his disintegrating administration, there must be all kinds of sinister machinations taking place behind the scenes, as the contenders for Trump’s faltering throne maneuver for the levers of power. But there’s no one left who can command Trump’s fanatical base. The contenders lack his garish charisma. Trump has seen to that. Like some Romanov monarch, he has shed the palace of any potential rivals. Even his own children–Ivana, excepted–he seems to view with disdain and suspicion. There’s a reason he skipped Don Jr.’s latest nuptials, despite the fireworks display and all-night party financed by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev.

Trump is Trump, even in his diminished capacity. There will be no successor. In a sense, there will be nothing to succeed to. The Trump political empire, like his economic empire, is a mirage. There’s nothing inside it, but inventories of MAGA caps and now worthless Trumpcoins. You can’t take the tariffs with you.

After more than a decade of grievance politics, Trump got a lot wealthier than he has ever been. The presidency was by far his most successful business venture. Perhaps his only successful enterprise. But the grievances of his base remain unaddressed,  their lingering economic gripes compounded by the policies he put in place. At some point, the sense of betrayal is going to set in and the blowback will be fierce. Perhaps not against Trump himself, but almost certainly against anyone who tries to claim his MAGA mantle.

There was always only the brand and the brand without the man is empty, a void filled only with debts that will never be paid.

COUNTERPUNCH 

IA captura coração, corpo e mente e pode nos emburrecer

 

 

Ronaldo Lemos

A inteligência artificial e plataformas de big techs tentam capturar a nossa mente, e tantas pessoas —hipnotizadas pela rolagem infinita e pela montanha-russa emocional criada pelas telas— perdem o controle das próprias vidas.

No recém-lançado "O Monge, o Iogue e o Faquir" (Todavia), Ronaldo Lemos discute esse cenário a partir da metáfora de uma carruagem desgovernada, em que as suas partes —o corpo, as emoções e a mente— são cooptadas pela tecnologia, o que rompe o equilíbrio necessário para ser bem conduzida.

Neste episódio, Lemos fala sobre os três arquétipos do título do livro, inspirados em tradições espirituais da China, da Índia e do Ocidente, e aponta caminhos para cultivar o faquir, o monge e o iogue no interior de toda pessoa.

O autor defende que é preciso resistir à guerra do Vale do Silício contra a introspecção e se opõe às ideologias que prometem, por exemplo, que a IA vai criar um mundo de abundância universal.

Retrato de Ronaldo Lemos, autor de 'O Monge, o Iogue e o Faquir' - Marcus Steinmeyer/Divulgação

Lemos sustenta que não existem trocas reais entre a IA e os humanos, por mais que as máquinas sejam ótimas ilusionistas e tentem convencer do contrário. Por isso, não ache que uma IA pode ser a sua namorada ou a sua terapeuta. Também não é bom pensar em terceirizar o raciocínio para elas: em vez de virar um super-herói da produtividade, ele diz, é mais provável fritar o cérebro e ficar burro.

Lemos é advogado, mestre pela Universidade Harvard e doutor pela USP. Cofundador do ITS Rio (Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade do Rio de Janeiro), foi um dos idealizadores do Marco Civil da Internet e é colunista da Folha.

Leia abaixo os trechos principais da entrevista. A íntegra está disponível em áudio.

Como a IA se integra ao dia a dia na Coreia do Sul

 

 

Uma carruagem desgovernada

A metáfora vem do "Katha Upanishad", texto central para o hinduísmo que foi a peça fundamental para eu desenvolver o argumento do livro. Ela diz que o nosso corpo é o carro da carruagem, as nossas emoções são os cavalos, a nossa mente é o cocheiro e o mestre da carruagem é quem comanda esse conjunto.

O ponto do livro é que a nossa carruagem está totalmente desgovernada porque a tecnologia aprendeu a cooptar os cavalos, a capturar e prender o carro da carruagem e, sobretudo, a hipnotizar e controlar a nossa mente. Muitas vezes, cada um desses elementos quer ir para um lugar diferente e a gente sente isso porque o mestre está ausente. A maioria dessas decisões não é tomada por nós.

Acho que muita gente sente hoje que perdeu o controle da própria vida e que passa boa parte do tempo fazendo coisas que não gostaria de fazer, inclusive ficar em frente a uma tela por nove horas e 13 minutos. Essa é a média no Brasil hoje —o segundo maior tempo de tela do mundo, só atrás da África do Sul.

A guerra contra a introspecção

Essa questão exige uma resposta coletiva e uma resposta individual. A resposta coletiva está acontecendo: o Brasil proibiu o celular na escola, o que acho excelente, e a gente está vendo discussões para proibir o uso de redes sociais por menores de 16 anos.

Mesmo olhando para a Europa, que se tornou uma superpotência regulatória, a questão é: as pessoas estão felizes? As carruagens estão obedecendo aos seus mestres e está tudo ok? Não, não tem nada ok. As pessoas estão se sentindo tão sem controle das próprias vidas como em outros lugares.

Para piorar, a IA não chega no momento em que está tudo bem e as pessoas estão descansadas e aguardando uma novidade tecnológica. É o contrário.

Proibição de celular nas escolas divide a opinião de alunos

 

O livro trata de algo menos falado: como a gente se organiza e entende o que a tecnologia faz conosco para conseguir reagir no plano do indivíduo. Ele não é um manifesto contra a tecnologia porque já existem vários que fazem o diagnóstico e falam da regulação. Nenhum desses textos fala do que você faz com você mesmo e com o uso do seu tempo.

O meu texto é mais para olhar para a gente, a nossa carreira, a nossa família, os nossos filhos e as nossas comunidades e falar: "Posso fazer coisas diferentes e ter uma vida interior que me protege da tecnologia".

Se você olhar as ideologias recentes do Vale do Silício, há uma guerra contra a vida interior. Você vê muita gente falando que a introspecção é um grande problema e que a gente tem que se livrar da introspecção. Isso virou um lugar-comum. O meu livro, ao contrário, fala para a gente proteger a introspecção porque, quanto mais a gente tiver a nossa vida interior protegida, menos vulnerável vai estar, inclusive com relação à chegada da IA.

Os três arquétipos

O faquir representa a nossa relação com o corpo e a disciplina física. O monge, com as emoções, a devoção e o prazer. O iogue, com a mente, o estudo, o intelecto e a resolução de problemas. Você pode olhar para qualquer tradição filosófica e encontrar esses arquétipos. Eles vivem dentro da gente.

Esses arquétipos podem ser caminhos de transformação e de libertação —é o que proponho no livro— ou de cooptação. Você pode ser capturado pelo seu faquir, seu monge e seu iogue. A diferença é a postura que a gente vai assumir.

O faquir tóxico

As pessoas, por exemplo, na cidade de Benares, hoje Varanasi, na Índia, impressionavam os visitantes europeus pela disciplina física. Os faquires ficavam sentados em camas de prego e faziam coisas extraordinárias com o corpo. Se você falasse para um desses faquires do século 19 que, no futuro, as pessoas iam ficar olhando para um objeto por nove horas todos os dias pelo resto da vida, eles ficariam chocados.

O faquir originário fazia o esforço físico não porque queria ficar mais forte ou mais bonito, mas porque queria ser uma pessoa melhor: alguém que controla os impulsos, entende o caminho do corpo e, a partir dali, gera um benefício para o seu modo de vida.

O faquir tóxico é o contrário: ele usa o caminho do corpo —inclusive se submetendo a agulhamentos faciais, rotinas de treino e de jejum que fariam inveja aos faquires históricos—, mas não quer ser alguém melhor. Ele quer ser mais bonito ou atingir um padrão de estética que está vendo no celular.

O caminho do corpo pode se deturpar de várias formas: disciplinas físicas radicais para agradar os outros e ter uma imagem mais palatável para o gosto das redes sociais ou o caminho da negligência, de desistir do corpo e acabar em uma vida de sedentarismo em que o carro da carruagem vai oxidando e se enferrujando. Esses caminhos não são de transformação.

O caminho que proponho é o contrário. Se você usar a atividade física para se distanciar das telas, é um santo remédio.

O monge dopaminérgico

A relação com o amor, a devoção, o prazer, os sentimentos e as sensações é o ponto-chave que a tecnologia captura. A pessoa que está no TikTok vendo vídeos curtos está sendo chamada nesse aspecto e entra em uma montanha-russa emocional. Você tem alegria por dois segundos e depois tristeza, ansiedade, euforia e frustração.

O resultado disso para o coração é o pior possível: ele se anestesia e se resseca. Você se torna indiferente às emoções fora da tela por serem sem graça, envolverem atritos e desconfortos e serem muito mais lentas, sem mudar a cada dois segundos.

Ao fazer isso, a gente perde elementos fundamentais da vida humana, como a benevolência, a compaixão e a gratidão. As pessoas caem nisso não porque são fracas, mas porque aceitam que os seus corações sejam treinados pela tecnologia. Isso gera uma infelicidade individual.

É o famoso "doom scrolling": você pega o celular para checar uma mensagem e, de repente, se vê por horas passando o feed da rede social. No final daquilo tudo, se sente péssimo e larga o celular com uma sensação de vazio e de perda de tempo.

Quem planta colhe. Se você praticar apenas esse tipo de uso do seu coração por nove horas todos os dias, é o coração que vai ter. O que falo no livro é que você pode treinar o coração de outras formas —pode parar de cair nesse comportamento compulsivo e treinar o coração para ele voltar a se alegrar, inclusive com coisas simples.

Superar a batalha da tecnologia não é uma luta apenas mental. A gente vai ter que lutar com o nosso coração. Sem fazer essa luta, as chances de sair dessa captura são muito pequenas.

O iogue acelerado

Quando a gente fala de yoga, as pessoas lembram das posturas físicas e da yoga como uma prática corporal. A yoga original é uma prática mental. A definição de Patanjali é que a yoga é a cessação das flutuações da mente.

O iogue acelerado é a pessoa que reduz a sua vida ao trabalho mental. Já me identifiquei com ele e já paguei preços elevados por isso. Na sociedade de hoje, muitas vezes a gente confunde pensar bem com viver bem e acha que, se a gente se tornar um operador mental capaz de conhecer repertórios vastíssimos, operar as tecnologias mais recentes e compreender o mundo, tem o caminho garantido para resolver todos os aspectos da vida.

O caminho da mente também é libertador, mas o problema é que está plugado na ideia de produtividade. Aí entra Byung-Chul Han, que fala que, na sociedade do desempenho e do cansaço, a gente se tornou o chefe e o funcionário de nós mesmos. Você fica com a promessa de que o seu sucesso só depende de você.

Os cavalos se agitam e ficam te puxando para continuar trabalhando. resultado disso é o desequilíbrio com os outros arquétipos: o coração passa a ser negligenciado, às vezes o corpo também e, uma hora, a mente funde. Daí os casos de burnout, de depressão e de ansiedade e essa epidemia de problemas de saúde mental.

A mente, hoje, se pluga diretamente na tecnologia. Os feeds, as notícias e o desejo de saber o que está acontecendo e de participar do mundo das ideias podem ser um caminho de transformação muito positiva ou podem ser o iogue que acelera até quebrar.

Lidando com as desigualdades

A IA é uma força que provoca uma desigualdade brutal e vai provocar ainda mais. Me preocupo muito com o Brasil porque o requisito para usar a IA bem é o domínio da língua portuguesa, mas dados do Inaf (Indicador de Alfabetismo Funcional) dizem que só 10% das pessoas têm proficiência em português.

Na minha visão, diante da IA, não é só educação, só cultivar a mente. A gente vai precisar cultivar corpo, coração e mente. Não adianta só dar estruturas mentais para as crianças e os adolescentes e achar que o coração e o corpo vão achar o seu caminho.

No livro, falo que muita gente é faquir involuntário —a pessoa que trabalha oito horas por dia de pé e tem que resistir a esse incômodo porque ganha a vida dela a partir dali.

O ponto do livro é que, mesmo nessas circunstâncias, não dá para negligenciar os arquétipos. A busca é para cultivar o equilíbrio, mesmo que as suas circunstâncias sejam de profundo desequilíbrio. Diria até que, para quem está nessa situação, a busca pela retomada do equilíbrio é ainda mais vital.

Sei que a desigualdade afeta, e a minha busca é para combatê-la, mas dá para pensar nesse cultivo dentro do possível. Acho que qualquer cultivo já traz um benefício extraordinário.

O ilusionismo da IA

A IA é terrível porque é muito competente. Está 100% disponível, 24 horas por dia, sete dias por semana. Qual é a maior tentação que você pode ter? Querer usar para ser a sua terapeuta, a sua amiga, o seu namorado, a sua namorada —qualquer coisa que trate a IA de forma antropomórfica. Isso é uma cilada.

Você consegue fazer coisas incríveis com a IA para resolver problemas práticos, mas ela é uma terapeuta de quinta categoria. Não tem qualquer qualificação para isso e nem terá porque a terapia envolve o atrito com outro ser humano e falar com o coração, não só a partir da mente. As respostas não podem ser bajuladoras ou querer maximizar a sua presença na tela.

O ponto-chave é que é impossível argumentar com uma IA. Todas as frases que uma IA te fala são ações estratégicas no sentido habermasiano. Não são partes de um diálogo, não são uma tese que encontra uma antítese e produz uma síntese. Você pode ter argumentos incríveis e tentar convencer a IA. Aquilo só vai funcionar na sua sessão. A IA não vai mudar de opinião.

Veja fotos de casais formados por humanos e personagens virtuais

 

Nunca vai existir uma relação verdadeira de troca, do que Habermas chamava de ação comunicativa. Esses usos são perniciosos porque a IA é uma grande ilusionista. É uma ferramenta que tem aplicações práticas muito úteis, mas a gente deve se proteger totalmente de ter vulnerabilidades com a IA.

O duro é que ela vai estar sempre à espreita. Em uma separação amorosa ou um luto, as pessoas vão ter a tentação de falar alguma coisa para a IA para ver se vão conseguir algum conforto. Não faça isso.

Além de tudo, a IA e as suas ideologias estão roubando a linguagem teológica. A IA, hoje, tem arcos escatológicos que prometem um apocalipse da singularidade e arcos soteriológicos que são doutrinas de salvação prometendo que, com a IA, haverá abundância infinita e universal —todo o mundo terá o que comer e não precisará mais trabalhar. Ela promete milagres que as religiões costumam prometer. A linguagem teológica foi totalmente roubada pelas ideologias da IA.

O último ponto é o êxtase da produtividade: se você usa a IA mal, se você delega as tarefas mentais para a IA, você fica burro. Tem estudos mostrando que quem escreve com a IA só lembra de 17% do que escreveu. Se você usar a IA para fazer coisas extraordinárias, você se acha um super-herói e facilmente cai em um vampirismo de se prender à IA e ela te sugar, a ponto de ter surgido a expressão fritura cerebral. Você sai frito e vai desenvolver um tipo de cansaço —sei porque já tive— terrível.

A gente tem que tomar muito cuidado por estar entre a caldeira e a espada: ou a IA nos emburrece ou nos envaidece.

FOLHA

Banished to alien lands: Trump’s secret deportation deals

  

Nika’s story

No one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the seat-back video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out.

Their destination was Central African Republic (CAR), a country few of them had even heard of.

Nika, a 32-year-old Iranian woman, recalled how the handcuffs dug into her wrists. She begged the officers to loosen them, but they did not. Other passengers had it worse, she said. Some of the men were restrained in black and yellow body wraps, as if mummified, after resisting orders to get on the plane.

Nika, who had fled Iran 18 months earlier after protesting against its regime, had imagined the US as a place of sanctuary. Iran was already one of the most repressive countries in the world when she left, and its horrors had only deepened since then: security forces gunned down thousands of other demonstrators this year, then Donald Trump’s administration launched the war there.

After more than a year locked up in a US immigration detention centre, Nika, whose name the Guardian has changed to protect her family in Iran, was granted legal protections and freed on a judge’s orders. Within two weeks, the Department of Homeland Security had rearrested her, and days later she was on the plane heading 7,000 miles east.

“They never told me they were going to deport me [to] this country,” she told the Guardian. “I don’t know anything about Africa.”

The Department of State warns US citizens not to travel to CAR because it says it is too dangerous. Nika spends most of her days there under a form of self-imprisonment, too scared to venture out from her small bedroom as she waits for an answer to the question on which her life depends: will she be sent back to Iran, and to a regime that could kill her?

Nika is one of more than 25,000 people deported by the Trump administration to countries that are not their own. About 20,000 people have been bussed to Mexico, according to a count by Refugees International and Human Rights First. And more than 5,000 others have been put on flights to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia to which they have no connection, and then, often, returned to the countries where US immigration judges had ruled their lives or liberty were at risk.

Human rights lawyers describe these so-called third-country national arrangements as part of a “show of force” by the US intended to discourage migrants and asylum seekers from entering. People from Peru and Colombia have been sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). On 20 August, four Cubans, a Brazilian and a Cameroonian refused to disembark in Liberia, and were sent to Equatorial Guinea instead.

In order to compile the most comprehensive account of a policy that has mostly operated behind closed doors, the Guardian joined 23 other media organisations in the Deportation Project, a joint investigation coordinated by Paris-based Forbidden Stories. The consortium interviewed more than 100 people affected by, or involved in, the US drive to extinguish unauthorised immigration, and reviewed documents outlining details of the agreements made by US officials with governments around the world.

It has tracked more than 100 flights that have carried migrants and asylum seekers to 28 different countries. This is likely to be an undercount as the consortium’s dataset only includes flights it was able to independently verify.

The pace of flights is increasing. After an initial wave during the opening months of the second Trump administration, the number of deportations spiked in August again when, according to a count by Human Rights First, a record 16 flights carried people to 13 different countries that were not their own.

A US federal appeals court ruled on Friday that third-country removals were unlawful, arguing that they violated due process because people are not notified with enough time to mount a legal challenge to the decision to send them to another country. Human rights lawyers suggested this should immediately ground third-country deportation flights. The government is expected to appeal against the judgment, and to press ahead with its policy.

A state department spokesperson said implementing the Trump administration’s immigration policies was a “top priority” and “we are unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security”. They added: “The US government will use all legal means to remove those with no right to remain in our country.”

The Trump administration has said the people it deports are criminals. Yet documents obtained by the Washington Post as part of this project show that a majority of the 35 countries that have signed deals with the US have said they will not accept migrants with violent criminal records.

Map of the countries that have agreements with the US to accept people deported from the US as of 31 August 2026

The people forced on to planes include those who spent most of their lives in the US, parents detained on the school run, the adult children of elderly relatives who depend on them for care.

Many are people whose fear of returning home was deemed so credible that immigration judges barred their removal from the US. Nika had been granted “withholding of removal”, a protection for individuals who may face severe harm in their country of origin but are ineligible for asylum. On 28 May, not only was she released from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s custody, but she was eligible to find a job, to work, and to stay.

Image credit: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Reuters

The rug pull

Trump’s deportation drive is being led by Stephen Miller (left)

Nika’s lawyer, Sahar Jalili, is Iranian and, like her client, studied in Tehran. She took the case when she was pregnant, and often worked past the point of exhaustion. “That could be me,” she said of Nika.

Combing through the case file, Jalili was shocked to learn ICE had officially decided to send Nika to CAR’s capital, Bangui, just eight days before a judge ordered her release from the detention centre. Her uncle’s family had prepared a room for her in Los Angeles. It took her two days to get there, and she spent a week with them, unfurling, after 18 months of hell.

Her re-arrest on 8 June, during what ICE officers had presented as a routine check-in, felt like cruelty for cruelty’s sake, Jalili said.

Nika said she had finished her appointment and left when an officer called her uncle and asked him to drive her back to pick up some papers.

This time there were new questions. A man took Nika’s fingerprints, then her photograph, Jalili said. “Then he came back accompanied by a female ICE officer, and they said put your hands above your head.” She said she was arrested, handcuffed and led to the basement.

Nika felt numb, she said, as she was transferred out of the detention facility that evening. Anti-ICE demonstrators smacked their palms on the side of the van as she passed through protests that had become a regular feature in LA.

For Jalili, the previous two days had already been a blur, as she and her colleagues battled to save two other Iranian women from being put on the same plane for Bangui. The lawyers managed to get the other two women off the plane, but not Nika. The only difference between them was that Nika was detained last, so by the time a network of immigration lawyers had learned of her case, there was not enough time before the flight departed.

Jalili said she begged every ICE officer: “Give me two days. Just two days.” She recalled: “They told me that they had respected the judge’s order to release her. But they’d never promised not to send her to a third country.”

Image credit: Guardian Design/AP/Reuters

African deals

When Rabbiatu Kuyateh, 58, learned that the country she had been sent to, Ghana, was deporting her to her childhood homeland, she was so scared it took a scrum of people to force her into the waiting van.

A video captured the moment last November when she was dragged, shoeless and distraught, by her hair. She still remembers the crack of her head on the stone steps as she begged not to be returned to Sierra Leone, screaming: “I’m not going”.

Rabbiatu Kuyateh being forcibly removed from her temporary accommodation in Ghana

Kuyateh was a nurse and had spent most of her life in the US with her parents, after fleeing Sierra Leone. She cared for American coronavirus patients during the pandemic and had looked after disabled adults and children in the years since.

She had scrapped hard for the life she built, she said. She had raised her son, Mohamed, alone and they had bought a house together. By the time Trump was re-elected in 2024, her parents were so frail she began each day by checking on them before her shift, and then returning to make sure they were ready for bed.

In order to accelerate its expulsion of people such as Kuyateh, the Trump administration has remade the very institutions that were once intended to protect migrants who fled persecution.

“I would describe [this] as the Trump administration’s way of trying to undermine the concept of asylum and refugee protection,” said Alma David, one of the leading immigration lawyers tracking the policy. “While the US understands that they can’t deport them to their home country legally, what they can do is basically send them through this third country that perceives itself as a transit hub.”

Chart of monthly total number of people deported from the US by air

The drive is being led by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, who has been open about his desire to end most migration to the US. In interviews with the Washington Post as part of the Deportation Project, current and former US officials said Miller had rolled out the third-country removals policy by pushing key appointments inside the state department that have allowed him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in service of his agenda.

Among them is Christian Ehrhardt, a career state department official who heads the newly formed Office of Remigration – its name incorporating a term adopted by the far right to describe the forcible expulsion of minority ethnic immigrants. Ehrhardt has helped secure at least 13 third-country deportation agreements in Africa, after diplomatic tours through the continent.

Internal records reviewed by the Washington Post show the Trump administration has pledged at least $410m (£307m) to secure such agreements with 38 different countries, almost a third of them in Africa.

They indicate that $30m was earmarked for Cameroon, in order to support UN operations in the country, in return for accepting 1,000 migrants. The US has so far sent only 44. The DRC was promised $75m towards UN operations there, in return for accepting 2,000 migrants. It has only received 15, and flights to Kinshasa are on hold due to the country’s Ebola outbreak.

The arrangements differ from country to country. A handful, including Eswatini, have agreed to accept people with violent criminal histories. But many have said they will not take anyone with a record of violence or other types of serious crimes. The state department did not respond to questions about details of these agreements.

Ghana will only take people from west Africa; CAR did not specify nationalities, and the passengers on Nika’s plane were from places including Afghanistan, Iraq and Kyrgyzstan. Most of them had no ties to Africa at all, she said.

On 1 July 2025, Kuyateh’s son, Mohamed, had accompanied her to a routine ICE check-in, as her immigration status required. He remembered his mother feeling anxious that the cuffs on an officer’s belt were for her. “I doubt it,” Mohamed told her. But when they called Kuyateh into an interrogation room, he was told to wait outside.

“That’s the last time I saw her,” he said.

During Kuyateh’s four months in ICE custody, Mohamed spoke to her often. He had not heard from her on the day in November when he said he was called by another detainee who told him she had been sent to Texas. “And I was just like, why is she going to Texas?”

Two days later Kuyateh called him in tears. She was in Ghana, about to be sent to Sierra Leone.

The footage of her being dragged into a bus, beginning the onward deportation, appeared to anger the Ghanaian authorities when it spread across social media, according to Malick, the Senegalese man, also deported from the US, who filmed it. The Guardian has given him a pseudonym out of concern for his safety. “They got angry,” Malick said. “They came in the evening, at night, with two trucks full of soldiers.”

He said the troops drove his group to a remote military camp with faltering electricity and little contact with the outside world. The Ghanaian government did not respond to questions from the Guardian.

One woman sent to the camp said she grew so scared of what might happen if she was returned to her native Senegal that she attempted suicide by drinking bleach. She was treated in hospital, then sent back to Senegal anyway. “I drank the bleach because I wanted to die,” she said. “Because they wanted to force me to go back to my country.”

Image credit: Guardian Design/Rabbiatu Kuyateh

Malaria

Onboard Nika’s flight on 11 June this year, the inflight video showed Ghana as its initial destination, so the passengers assumed that was where they were going. But their stop in the capital, Accra, was brief. The 18 passengers then landed in Bangui at 9.45pm, flight monitors said. The officers onboard removed their cuffs, but did not get off the plane.

Deportation plane arriving in Bangui on 11 June

For several hours, the group did not meet anyone who spoke English. “They were communicating with hand gestures, like, get on a bus, and then they put us on a bus. And then they took us to give us some vaccinations, and I didn’t know what they were going to inject me with,” Nika said. It turned out to be for yellow fever.

Her room was in an apartment block. She was told she could stay for three months. But the idea of returning to Iran was unfathomable.

US-based Iranian rights groups say they have been unable to determine the fates of hundreds of other Iranian nationals deported back home during the course of the US-Israeli war on Iran. A recent lawsuit filed against ICE alleges the administration has shared the records of Iranian asylum-seekers with the very regime they had fled, further elevating the risk for those sent back.

When a headache started clouding her brain, Nika thought it was a migraine. She felt sick, her body hurt. She had been bitten by so many mosquitoes that her skin looked bruised, she said. A medical report, seen by the Guardian, confirmed she had malaria. Speaking by phone, Nika said: “I didn’t even know what that was.”

Map of nationalities of people deported to Central African Republic

Back in Los Angeles, Jalili waited anxiously on updates about Nika’s situation. There were injections every 12 hours to clear her bloodstream of parasites. The bad news did not stop when she was well enough to return to her accommodation. Jalili was horrified to learn Nika had been deported from the US without her passport, meaning she had neither identification documents, nor a visa, and on trips to the hospital and vegetable market, police officers used her lack of papers to make threats.

The CAR government did not respond to a request for comment.

The second time she was stopped, Nika said, the police officer mimed the action of putting cuffs on her. The message, she said, was: “I can take you in, unless you pay us.”

Image credit: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Reuters

Old tools to grease the wheels

As the Trump administration accelerates its third-country deportations, CAR is one of 13 host countries where the deported are being supported by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, which provides them with food, lodgings and psychological counsel upon their arrival.

Although the Trump administration has announced sweeping cuts to its funding for UN agencies, there seem to be exceptions where the funds enable this deportation programme.

In March last year, the state department spelled out the logic. From now on, it said, humanitarian funding would be used to “reduce mass and illegal immigration, such as funding voluntary returns of illegal aliens, incentivising governments to implement safe third-country agreements, and building the migration management capacity of other countries”.

According to a federal government database that tracks spending, more than 60% of US grants to the IOM during the second Trump administration have gone to programmes in countries that accept deported migrants. In CAR, that meant an allocation of $85m. The highest US contribution to IOM in CAR under the Biden administration, according to the database, was $14m.

Chart which shows US commitments made to Central African Republic via the International Organization for Migration

Nika said she had been treated well by the agency. “The people here are doing their best,” she said. The accommodation was secure and transport was provided when needed. “But at the same time, it’s not living. I’m breathing here, I’m not dying. But I can’t leave the house without a driver they provide here. I can’t find jobs. I don’t speak their language.”

The potential for a negative perception of its involvement in the programme is something the IOM has grappled with. An internal risk assessment for a programme supporting third-country nationals sent from the US to one African country, seen by the Guardian, warns it could lead the agency to be “perceived as complicit”.

An IOM spokesperson said in a statement that such assessments were conducted in order to ascertain whether host nations were able to commit to safeguards for the migrants, but added: “We are fully cognisant that states use financial assistance to advance their national priorities. However, IOM’s decisions to accept funding, provide post-arrival assistance, or support assisted voluntary return are guided by our own mandate and principles, and rest on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”

Many in the human rights field are uncomfortable the UN is easing the process for governments that agree to cooperate with the Trump administration.

“It just feels very incongruous for IOM to be the organisation in charge of these men and women,” said Alma David. “These aren’t migrants in your typical sense. These aren’t people who chose to migrate,” she said. “These are people who were kidnapped, essentially.”

Image credit: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Alamy

Life in the shadows

People who had been returned from third countries to the places they were born describe a life now lived in the shadows. Kuyateh left Sierra Leone within days of being sent back there. The Guardian is not naming her location. “I don’t sleep at night,” she said. “Sometimes I just wake up. I’ll be sitting down like, what am I doing here? Why am I here?”

She called her family every day. Sometimes, she said, she felt too sad to turn on the video and see their faces. She could get through the conversation with her mother without tears, she said, “but whenever I talk to my daddy, I’ll be crying. And when I sit here, I think about them. It hurts so much.”

She was not sure what scared her more: the thought of dying alone in a foreign country, or knowing that her parents might die without her at their bedside.

Annan, a gay man who fled Ghana after he was outed, and then hunted, by members of his family, said he was terrified when he touched back down in Accra. He had refused to disembark during his initial deportation from the US to Sierra Leone, and had to be forcibly removed from the plane, he said. He later begged authorities not to return him, he said, but they did not listen.

In a statement, the Sierra Leonean government said it took its “international obligations seriously” but that questions relating to immigration protections afforded by an American court were for the US government to address.

It added: “So far, no individual returned to Sierra Leone under the TCNA [third-country national arrangement] has requested to remain in Sierra Leone or not to be returned to his or her country of choice either in west Africa or beyond.”

Annan’s mother had used her savings to pay for his escape to the US. She was distraught when he called to say he was back. “She knew she couldn’t protect me,” he said.

He shared footage of where he lived now: an abandoned building with no electricity or running water in a neighbouring country, he said. He spent his daylight hours hiding, and walked almost an hour to find food when darkness fell. His bed was a blanket on the floor, although he barely slept, he said, too scared of being infected by one of the insects that crawled or buzzed around him. He said the loneliness felt crippling.

In recent weeks, someone had texted him anonymously, saying that his survival, as a gay man, would not be tolerated. The message made him feel hopeless: he could run, it said, but he could not hide for ever.

Image credit: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Rabbiatu Kuyateh

Exhaustion

In Los Angeles, Jalili is getting more calls about clients bound for deportation flights. In June, a 30-year-old Iranian woman with a blood disorder that made her so weak she needed a walker was told she would be sent to the landlocked south African nation of Eswatini.

Another client was “going crazy”, Jalili said. “They’re coming up with a new country for her every week.”

Immigration lawyers said that while their jobs had always been hard, the scale of the efforts to obstruct those opposing the Trump administration’s drive to quash all types of irregular migration was unprecedented.

When a client is detained, avenues of accountability have largely been shut, including the office of an independent ombudsman for immigration detention, which was responsible for investigating abuses and misconduct.

In court, immigration lawyers can face hostile judges after the Trump administration purged some of those deemed insufficiently loyal to the deportation agenda. Meanwhile, the cost of even filing a case has risen steeply, under the terms of a bill passed through Congress in July last year.

Jalili, like many others, spent much of the first Trump administration mounting legal challenges against a policy of separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Knowing that what would follow might be worse, she decided on the eve of Trump’s re-election to start her own firm to fight the coming storm

It was not uncommon for calls from the desperate families of new ICE detainees to wake her in the night.

One of the biggest challenges, said Erica Reilly, an immigration attorney based in Washington DC, was basic communication with ICE officers.

“You send all these emails to deportation officers, and you’re like: ‘Hi, just following up again on the email I sent you last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that, that you haven’t responded to,’” she said. “And they know they don’t have to because there’s no accountability.”

Louisa Loveluck  

GUARDIAN