"Online platforms are a kind of artificial consciousness: they are trying to do the work of our cognitive system, highlighting some possibilities and hiding others," Francis Steen said at the University of Navarra. The professor of programs of study of Communication at the University of California-Los Angeles took part in a workshop of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), funded by the Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness.

Regarding artificial intelligence research that aims to reproduce brain functions, researcher believes that it underestimates the capabilities of the brain. He believes that neither physics nor current mechanics are capable of reproducing aspects such as creativity or value perception. "It may be that the brain uses other types of physics that exist, but that we have not yet discovered," he says.

An example of artificial intelligence that anticipates human thinking is content based on Internet users. In Steen's view, algorithms that choose what is important to the Username based on their 'Likes' limit the audience's view and undermine their ability to make decisions. "You receive the information you like," he explains, "which means that your view of the world is reinforced and you cannot listen to other voices". In contrast, the expert points out that traditional media offer new points of view and information that the audience is unaware of.

Steen has analyzed how people behave in alternative scenarios and how both media and online technologies alter the vision of the possible. He notes that humans want to know the possibilities and consequences of events in order to control them. For that reason, he argues that most news "prioritizes the possible over the factual, as with our cognitive system."

Journalism: analyzing facts to change reality

From agreement with the professor, news programs give more importance to what is possible, such as who will win the PSOE primaries in Spain, the consequences of a Trump election promise or even the weather forecast. He explains that this happens because, by understanding the factors involved in an event and the consequences it may have, it is possible to decide when and how to act to change reality.

Likewise, Steen assigns to the media the role of reflecting on the "undesirable events" that have occurred in order to avoid their repetition. "The newspapers are full of article on why Brexit won. We can't stop it, but we want to understand what happened," he exemplifies.

These were the contributions of Francis Steen in a congress of the Creatime line, framed in the project of research 'Public discourse' of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. Creatime tries to understand human creativity through the study of imagination and the representation of time in oral conversation, nonverbal language (gestures), cinema and poetry.