Antonio Gala's 1991 warning: AI will not bring happiness

Antonio Gala's 1991 warning: AI will not bring happiness

What if someone had described our current way of life with unsettling accuracy back in 1991? In a television interview that year, the writer Antonio Gala anticipated a future of long-lived, overworked people, relationships standardized by identical manuals, and an artificial intelligence that would help pass the time rather than foster happiness. The conversation has resurfaced, reopening an ageless question: was he a prophet, or was he simply repeating what every generation says about the next?

The most cited passage is also the most uncomfortable. Gala imagines anyone pressing a key to learn about Velázquez, Goya, or Cervantes, adding: "I antiestéticar, Quintero, that such a person will feel no need to know who Goya, Velázquez, or Cervantes were... and won't press the key." Thirty-four years later, the key exists. The doubt is whether anyone actually presses it.

What Antonio Gala exactly said about artificial intelligence

The prediction extends beyond technology. Gala speaks of a humanity that will live longer, in a sort of new Middle Ages, with people who are fulfilled yet prefabricated, forced to work harder to support more elderly citizens and fewer children. Many will be unable to work. Behavior will be guided by orders or brochures, because no one will have time to read: brochures on how to succeed, how to make friends, how to woo someone, or how to have fun. And since everyone will read the same brochures, relationships will be easy but boring.

Some argue this passage predicted the platform economy, the fiscal burden of aging, and even dating apps years in advance. On the other hand, a reasonable counter-argument exists: in 1991, the World Wide Web had just been born, and science fiction had been exploring these same antiestéticars for decades. The first Terminator film was released in 1985. Knight Rider was from that same era. The originality of his prophecy is, at the very least, debatable.

The key no one presses: instant culture and waning curiosity

The passage regarding Velázquez, Goya, and Cervantes captures the pessimism of his diagnosis. Culture is just a click away, but universal access has not produced universal enlightenment. It is the same reasoning used to remind us that compulsory public education did not turn everyone into scholars. The difference is the scale: knowledge has never been so cheap yet so ignored.

Against this view, another current defends the opposite. Free access to culture has expanded the potential audience unprecedentedly: one no longer needs to spend money or travel to a library to consult any fact. The existence of uneducated people today is not a system failure, but an anthropological constant. Technology does not create or destroy fools; it only multiplies them.

From "everything was better" to the brochures we now read

The conversation quickly shifts toward generational lamentation. Some participants describe the nineties as the pinnacle of Western civilization: street football, arcades, Walkman batteries, recording songs from the radio onto cassettes, and movie tickets bundled with McDonald's. One participant even marks the turning point in 2001, with the end of the brief Pax Americana trinc 1991.

The problem with this narrative is that it confuses nostalgia with analysis. 36 kbps modem technology did not allow for streaming or apps, but it also did not allow for remote work, remote diagnosis, or accessing digitized archives from home. It is easy to long for slowness when you are no longer dependent on it. And Gala's diagnosis regarding brochures—identical instructions for everyone, easy but boring relationships—is fulfilled today more accurately by self-help manuals and recommendation algorithms than by any technological dystopia.

Was Gala wrong about anything?

Yes, on one specific and highly cited point: relationships. Gala predicted they would be easy. Available evidence suggests the opposite. Some argue that people have less sens and fewer social circles than three decades ago, despite having apps designed specifically to facilitate it. The paradox is striking: there have never been so many tools to meet people, yet isolation has never been so frequent.

The rest of the prophecy holds up better against the passage of time. The replacement of natural intelligence with artificial intelligences that help pass the time, rather than bring happiness, is currently a fairly accurate description of how conversational assistants are used. The question is not whether Gala was a prophet. The question is why it still surprises us when someone describes the present thirty years in advance.

Perhaps because the present feels both inevitable and unbearable. Or perhaps because, as Gala himself said, no one is going to press the key.