HUMAIN
What ten philosophers teach us about living with AI
What does AI do to what it means to be human? Ten philosophers, one question, and an instrument that kindles our human fire or smothers it.
Ten philosophers, one question
The diagnosis
What AI does to you as soon as you stop paying attention: how optimisation takes over the choice, how a gaze pins you down, how measurement steers your behaviour, and how an image of you becomes more important than you.
The boundary
What AI cannot take over in principle, however good it gets: understanding what it says, taking the leap only you can take, and seeing the world as more than a stockpile.
The destination
What remains, and even grows, when executive work shifts to machines. Not what AI takes from us, but what a person uses their instruments for.
Chapter by chapter
- PrologueWhat do you allow?Coming soon
- 01The glass palaceA recommendation does not only take over the choosing, it also takes away the burden of choosing. That very burden is what Dostoevsky’s human wants: being able to choose against the grain proves you are not a mechanism.DostoevskyRead (NL) →
- 02The gaze that pins you downYou exist first and only then become who you choose to be. A profile that presses your past into a prediction pins you down to who you were, and it is tempting to believe that label yourself.SartreComing soon
- 03The tower you never look intoPower today rarely works through coercion, but through measurement. It only becomes truly strong when we start to watch ourselves, with instruments we pay for ourselves.FoucaultComing soon
- 04The map that devoured the territoryFirst the model replaces reality. With AI agents, a digital version of you sends emails and makes appointments in your name, until you are no longer needed.BaudrillardComing soon
- 05The room without understandingA machine can produce the form of understanding without the content. Who, then, understands what is being said, and who checks it?SearleComing soon
- 06The leap the algorithm does not makeYou become human through a choice no one else can carry for you. A statistical average can prepare that leap, but rarely make it.KierkegaardComing soon
- 07The tyranny of measurementTechnology is not a neutral tool but a way of looking: everything, including the human being, appears as raw material to optimise.HeideggerComing soon
- 08The banal machineThoughtlessness is as destructive as malice. “Computer says no” is a chain of decisions without an owner, while judging remains something a human has to answer for.ArendtComing soon
- 09The rock and the meaningThe effort itself is the meaning, not what it yields. What do you do with the effort AI takes off your hands?CamusComing soon
- 10The Last ManHuman worth is forged in resistance. Whoever lets all friction be removed becomes smaller. Whoever uses AI to seek out contradiction grows.NietzscheComing soon
- EpilogueThe apotheosisComing soon
Free to read, not free of commitment
You may read the book freely. In return I ask you for something that is rare and valuable right now: your human feedback.
In a time when a machine can produce endless text, a human who truly reads and judges honestly has become the scarce good.
Give your human feedback
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