Two sisters: artificial and emotional intelligences

 In Emotional Intelligence

I thought this could be the introductory entry to the EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE section of my blog when I heard what one of my favourite reporters was saying on the radio during breakfast.

 

Ignacio Varela was talking about these new transport companies which clash with traditional taxi drivers. He said many interesting things among which he claimed that future transportation is pictured actually as robots taking us in programmed vehicles from A to B. This clicked with the webinar on Mediation by OUP I was watching not long ago where Automation was described as the future of many jobs.

 

Receptionists, waiters, secretaries, and even doctors in their first consultation visits. They all have something in common: a fixed work pattern that can be repeated over and over again, which could obviously be done «very easily» by a robot.

 

My cousin is a GP. She was telling me how already answerphones can “diagnose” patients by answering “press one” or “press two” questions so the patients get redirected to such and such a specialist. To my amazement, whether the patient could be having a heart failure while pressing one or two is obviously disregarded. And the Human Factor cannot possibly be replaced. At least, I don’t think it should.

 

 

the Human Factor cannot be replaced

 

 

The way I see it the human factor is losing against artificial intelligence. You only need to look around to realise how many humans are staring at a screen instead of looking at each other’s eyes.

 

It was not so long ago that I was a kid. We used to take  t-h-e  t-i-m-e to go and sit on the mountain peak or by the seashore to watch the sunset. We would sit by grandpa or grandma for hours just doing nothing, listening to stories which could be real or imaginary… for hours… Families would gather by the fire or at the main entrance door to just let time pass by. And we would talk, and listen, and hear, and smell.

 

Today we seem to all be stuck to machines that are telling us what to do, how to pose, which item to buy, what video to watch or songs to listen to.

 

We are invited to stay near the screen a little longer not to miss the latest and what we are missing in fact is Life. We are missing the stories IRL, the sunsets that are not in the camera, the smells which couldn’t possibly come out of the box, the music from the piano lounge.

 

Artificial intelligence is the, I was going to say future but it is actually already “here and now”. Jobs are posted on social media, family gatherings, reunions, the full monty is on social media. And this is great in one sense! I can travel, work, learn, write to you and a million things, without having to leave the sofa where I am sitting now. But on the other hand this is also, without a doubt, isolating us. The UK has been the first country to realise how far we are going and how quickly as well. And how sad things can turn in fact as Tracey Crouch  herself would explain.

 

Mindfulness is becoming part of the curriculum in European schools and all over the world. Emotional Intelligence is a trend. But is it a trend or a need. More and more people feel lonely, isolated, sad, or different, weird, odd…and what we do not realise is that we are the ones creating this isolated world for ourselves. Depression is considered by WHO (world health organisation) the main cause of disability, specially among the female sex.

 

 

We are growing more and more connected to The Cloud, disconnected from ourselves

 

 

Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness can connect us to our own beings, to the real world, to other human beings, to recognising each other in the other. We all have emotions. We all have a need to socialise. We are all human.  No matter where in the world we are.

 

The Digital world has come to stay but we mustn’t forget we are not digital we are REAL. We have real feelings, emotions, sensations, perceptions. Mindfulness and emotional intelligence can get us in contact with self awareness, which is a powerful tool to realise where we are, who we are, what we need. It can turn us more satisfied with ourselves and the others.

 

Ignacio Varela closed his speech by saying something like I wish we could “record patterns in our brains for the future” as patterns are changing fast: reading patterns, concentration patterns, listening patterns. It’s all fast fast fast.

 

 

Patterns can change

 

 

More and more anxiety, stress, panic attacks, strokes, or mini -strokes are filling the doctors consultations at the moment. Self awareness raised by practices like Mindfulness or other interesting approaches can help us humans register patterns in our brains and bodies. Stress can be reduced. Emotions can get regulated. Thus maybe making us happier human beings.

 

Like the Titanic had her sister, which survived, us humans shouldn’t let Artificial Intelligence grow-up in this brave new world we are creating, without the Emotional Intelligence sister side by side.

 

 

 

La vida, sin prisa

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