This fortnight has yielded a bumper harvest of bull. First came the decision by Judge Giovanni Grixti to block further investigations into the Vitals hospitals deal. I have written about my belief in the soundness of our justices, but Judge Grixti’s quixotic decision has sorely tested this belief.
Do read the list of 17 facts annexed to Repubblika’s complaint to the Justice Commission on Judge Grixti’s judgment. It is a sombre indictment of the lack of fitness for purpose of this government and its ministers; I just hope that a judge will not be added to this list.
Then came the moral paralysis of Malta’s highest State institutions in the face of the second anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. The Prime Minister is still suing her, and has set up an ‘independent’ inquiry that satisfies neither her family nor the Council of Europe. The Leader of the Opposition as recently as the release of the Egrant report executive summary still saw fit to denigrate her memory. Yet they solemnly agreed to close Parliament. Out of respect. U ħalluna.
And where was President George Vella?
A replica’s even better
The umpteenth mega shopping development, this time in Qormi, has ignored the conditions imposed by the Planning Authority (PA) to carefully dismantle and rebuild a structure from the time of the Knights that stood in the way of the developers’ plans. Instead the contractors simply destroyed it to replace it with a replica. A replica?
I had to go to see this aberration. It squats just next to the Maltapost centre in Qormi. The brickwork and concrete are ready; contractors just need to slap on the franka cladding, jaħasra. I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned on using the weathered faces of the stone blocks from the original structure and: voilà! You’d hardly know the difference.
Firstly, a question to the PA: who does your planning, Uncle Fester? There are going to be three mega shopping complexes right next to each other, trying to financially strangulate each other as the exhaust and chaos generated by their customers’ cars strangulate, erm, their customers.
Even now with two complexes, the traffic going in, out and alongside them slows to a crawl, irrespective or how much parking each complex does provide. With three complexes, this corner of Qormi is going to be road-rage heaven, generating more CO2 than a herd of cows on broccoli.
But back to the monstrosity. In actual fact, the construction of a replica is but the end point of a long road of violation of Malta’s historical built environment over the decades. Venerable buildings were destroyed or given over to chicken farms or rubbish dumps. Others were gutted in the hope they would crumble and make way for a blokka flets.
Some have been left with just a façade which is then overlaid with more stories than the height of the original building, like a sumo wrestler piggy-backing his granny. For a prime example, go to Qui-Si-Sana on the left of the Preluna and see for yourself.
When ignorance meets arrogance there is no appreciation of history, that wise reminder of past glories – and past mistakes
Many see no problem with the construction of fake rubble walls along public roads that started being used well before 2013. Some actually like the idea that Gozo’s Azure Window could be replaced by a steel or a holographic replica.
When ignorance meets arrogance there is no appreciation of history, that wise reminder of past glories – and past mistakes. When reality is but a convenient construct to obtain power and wealth, what’s the difference between the real thing and its mirage?
The replica at Qormi is a perfect metaphor for the artificiality that has become a trademark of our island home, where hardly anything is what it seems.
Malta the Terminator
Government has announced its intention to have Malta at the forefront of artificial intelligence. How appropriate. If there is one place where intelligence is artificial, it’s Malta. That’s not just a cheap joke; there is real and growing concern worldwide about the terrifying potential of AI.
The BBC has reported that in its invasion of Syria against the Kurds, Turkey plans to deploy robotic hardware that can take autonomous decisions in terminating designated ‘enemy’ in the field. If that sounds like something out of the Terminator film franchise, well, it is its progenitor. China’s use of face-recognition and other AI software to monitor the social behaviour of its millions is making George Orwell’s 1984 come to life. Look closely at Minister Konrad Mizzi and you’d swear that so is Bladerunner.
Seriously now, I know that this is making me sound like an alarmist technophobe, but hear me out. There are many voices in the industry internationally that are sounding the alarm at what they see as the race to develop AI without ethical guidelines and constraints. They see it as the latest version of a planetary arms race.
Malta’s national AI strategy does have a strong ethical component – on paper. It will have the world’s first national AI certification programme that will ensure that AI systems have been developed in an “ethically aligned, transparent and socially responsible manner” that respects human rights and democratic values. Certification, we are told, will be awarded following a thorough audit process undertaken by independent experts. Mmm.
Permit me to be sceptical. If there is one thing that Malta does better than the artificiality of its intelligence, it is its ability to build a soaring regulatory framework that, on closer inspection, is about as strong as the paper it’s written on. We have seen time and time again how governments legitimise their intended action through ‘independent’ authorities and their ‘independent’ experts.
This form of remote governance did not start in 2013, but it has rapidly gathered pace and mushroomed in scope since. Witness what has just happened in the Lands Authority, that I wrote about in my previous article. Add to this an avowed national policy that raises unfettered, irresponsible, amoral economic growth to the status of infallible dogma. Mix in some truly troubling consequences of this dogma, such that the golden passports scheme and the acceptance (after incredible due diligence, of course) of dodgy banks and iGaming outfits to set up shop in Malta.
The bubbling brew that results is the coffee that the Malta AI Taskforce will have to wake up to pretty soon. I am not pointing fingers at the personal or professional integrity of these people. I am simply saying that they have to be really, really careful about the possibility, if not the probability, of being dragged away by the currents swirling around them, or pulled down by the sharks that will surely be hiding within those currents. Colleagues: beware, is all I’m saying.
If Malta’s AI strategy does go down the sorry path of other strategies before it and cuts ethical corners in favour of jobs and foreign investment, the consequences will be felt well beyond our shores. I am not talking about national reputational damage (at this point we are practically punch-drunk anyway). I am talking about Malta becoming a safe haven for the production of AI that could endanger humanity in the decades to come.
How’s that for really artificial intelligence?