On Saturday, I attended a very unique launch of a new art space in Istanbul’s historic Karaköy neighborhood. The Culture and Civilization Foundation (KÜME) held the launch of the "ArtıKÜME 2025 Selection" and the "ODAK" project under the title "Possible" ("Mümkün") with an opening program at the repurposed Karaköy Palace.

The exhibition features 25 projects from various disciplines, from digital art to calligraphy, creating an encounter of the soul of traditional arts with modernity. A similar connection is also visible in the repurposing of the Karaköy Palace. The character of the building is being reintroduced through combining the heritage of an "Istanbul building" with the creation of contemporary art production.

For me, this connection between the past and the contemporary is very significant, and more specifically, more human. In other words, the connection of what makes "us" – and whatever that may be – must not be disconnected from the past, from the tradition, from the essence of what has made us throughout the journey until today.

This simply applies to knowledge as well. Without the traditional knowledge, the accumulation of the expertise we have today would perhaps not be possible. The progress is, precisely, built upon the past, the present and carried to the future. Here, it is further important to understand and embrace - where necessary - the soul of the heritage with us as well. The meaning and the soul must not be excluded from the journey. The face value and the mere materialistic understanding are not enough to feed the progress of the human race.

As I was wandering through the exhibition with the guests of the launch, I was also traveling through these thoughts around tradition and modernity as we are also exploring the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and debates around human vs machine – or more recently, human vs AI. Can we progress by solely building soulless machines or algorithms and codes? Can the very pressing issues of the human race be tackled simply by machines working on codes? Are the codes superior to human thought processes? And for me, more importantly, how will humanity deal with the issue of ethics, morals and soul-related issues in the age of AI?

These questions are no longer at the center of academic debates only. The emergence of AI and related developments is affecting the average Joe on the street’s daily life. From simple searches to academic papers, from medicine to the use of AI as a new weapon between the nations. But, how about regulation? How about where this will take us without the basic control mechanisms needed to eliminate harm to humanity, the environment and beyond.

I am not a tech expert to further analyze this issue through a technological lens. But as a journalist and an academic, I witness both the benefits and disadvantages of AI through my daily tasks and those I engage with. Nevertheless, the issue of AI is beyond personal use of simple programs for searches, etc. What is frightening is that the question about where this will take us has been simply answered by what has been called a "manifesto" of a tech giant.

Manifesto?

The U.S. tech giant Palantir Technologies posted a message on the social media platform X on April 18 in what they termed as a summary of the book "The Technological Republic," authored by Palantir CEO Alex Karp and head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska.

In the 22-point manifesto, the tech giant explicitly calls for the engagement of technology firms to participate in the defense of states as a "moral” responsibility.

The controversial – to say the least – "manifesto" argues that "The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”

"The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose,” it says in another point, and adds: "The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.”

Of course, the debate about AI and its use by governments in tackling adversaries is noteworthy, as its controversial uses have been documented in many areas, from U.S. immigration policies to the genocide in Gaza.

But the question is not whether we should ignore technology or be against the use of AI. Rather, it should be whether we can use it to benefit human progress, or whether we can find another way to approach and embrace the technology that humans created with knowledge accumulated through and upon the heritage that includes ethics and morals in human progress. In other words, this is a question of how a civilization centers the essence of humanity in its future.

Humanizing the machine

Back to Karaköy Palace and my visit to ArtıKüme exhibition. As I attentively listened to the opening speeches, several sentences caught my attention in particular.

"As an engineer, you see me surrounded by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aircraft, software and high technology,” said Selçuk Bayraktar, the chair of the board of trustees of the Culture and Civilization Foundation (KÜME Vakfı).

"However, while developing all these systems, there is a much deeper issue that I perceive. We are in such an era that the line between human and machine is becoming increasingly blurred. We are heading toward a dark age where machines imitate humans and humans are rapidly becoming mechanized,” added Bayrakter, who is also known as the architect of Türkiye’s first indigenous unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) systems, the Bayraktar TB3 UCAV, the world’s first unmanned aerial vehicle to take off and land on a short-runway vessel and the Bayraktar KIZILELMA, Türkiye’s first unmanned fighter aircraft.

To be frank, these words immediately caught my attention as I was already engaged with the back-and-forths about humans vs. machine and humans vs. AI rivalry. Maybe there is another way, in fact. Instead of rivalry, an approach that treats the human-machine relationship as a complementary one may be what is needed.

"We are faced with an invasion of soulless rationalism, a materialism that grants the right to life and liberty to no one but itself and mechanized people. Against this invasion, one of our strongest sanctuaries that makes us human is art. However, if there is no emotion, feeling or meaning, art has no significance or value. There is no art for machines or machine-like people. Just as there is no faith, love, compassion, freedom or even a passion-filled longing, there is also no pain, yearning or grief for machines.”

The connection between machines and the arts is indeed a topic for another article and perhaps should be penned by someone who could better explain that relationship. What concerned me even deeper were the following sentences of Bayraktar:

"For machines and machine-like people, there are only infinite loops, programmed futile tasks, a darkness that has lost its meaning and ultimately, inevitable extinction and absolute destruction.”

When a tech giant, like Palantir, seeks the use of AI as the defense systems of a nation without any human control, then this is exactly what leads to that "infinite loop" of the profit monster that seeks to benefit from all, even when it could lead to the "inevitable and absolute destruction" of humanity.

Strikingly, Bayraktar offers an alternative approach: "A machine does not suffer, a machine does not feel longing, a machine does not ask 'why.' We must protect that divine soul and deep sensitivity that makes the human, defined by our faith as the most honorable of creations, the Ashraf-i Makhluqat.”

Indeed, this approach is not one that ignores technological advancement and the benefits it has for humanity. While technology, such as in drones, can be used to protect a nation against adversaries, it can also be used to monitor forest fires and other natural disasters. In other words, this approach includes the human-first approach that seeks to produce and develop technology that could benefit human progress, not human destruction. It employs the "divine soul and deep sensitivity" that positions humans with responsibility toward not only the present but also the future. Importantly, it takes this sense of responsibility from the heritage that enabled human progress to what it has become today. And that heritage was based on ethics, morals and responsibility toward all creations for the sake of the Creator.