The ongoing debates on the horizon of artificial intelligence are highlighting one particular point more than in the past: anthropocentrism has been challenged by a human solution, how to dissolve this paradox? How to interpret the phenomenon?
Heidegger: the role of philosophy
Once again, philosophy, a discipline we hear very little about now, could make a difference because, in its silent observing and reasoning, it actually predicted what happened next. The prediction, almost prophetic but actually very intelligent, was clearly written by the philosopher Heidegger who is rightly considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
In 1966 Martin Heidegger was interviewed by the editor-in-chief of ‘Der Spiegel’, the famous German magazine; this interview was to be published ‘only’ ten years later and was entitled ‘Now only a god can save us’. In one of the passages of this interview Heidegger states a concept that will remain engraved in history.
Everything works. That is precisely the disturbing thing, that it works and that working always pushes further towards further working and that technology rips and uproots man more and more from the earth. I do not know if you are frightened, I was in any case as soon as I saw the photographs of the Earth taken from the Moon. There is no need for the atom bomb: the uprooting of man is already done. All that remains [are problems] of pure technique. It is no longer the Earth that man lives on today.
Source: Interview with Martin Heidegger(LINK)
Technique and Rationality
Heidegger was not crazy: when he speaks of the uprooting of man, the concept must be clarified. Heidegger argues that man, over the centuries, has refined technique as the ultimate rationalising element of human thought and has entrusted his life to technique. Technique, however, provides nothing but functionality, the action of calculation. There is no place within technology for the human being, for his ‘passions’, for what is right and wrong, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Modern society is geared towards a technique that on the one hand ‘reassures’ the human being because it is apparently able to solve problems, and on the other hand does not need the human being and his humanity.
The problem would not be technology as such but the fact that it has become society’s ‘sole model’ of thought, to the exclusion of all that is less functional but more human. In a wonderful interview with Umberto Galimberti about his book on Heidegger, the philosopher illustrates this transition by explaining that man transitions from ‘subject of life’ to ‘function of apparatus’.
Man becomes, precisely, a cog that serves the apparatus for its functioning. The apparatus analyses, evaluates, rationalises, assigns roles, rewards and penalises, but not according to a vital logic, but according to rules that do not require the human being. The apparatus was created by man, but it does not require man to stay alive and live. Heidegger is way ahead of his time when he speaks of the ‘demise of the West’ and he does so not because of a pessimistic streak, but because of the fact that apart from this model of thought, there is no other capable of truly putting man at the centre.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has appeared on the human horizon as an invaluable resource: it can free humans from heavy, exhausting, toxic work. It can quickly calculate solutions and help save lives but, despite all these benefits, another problem has arisen. People are beginning to consider that artificial intelligence may not need the human being and that, indeed, he may be a problem to its development. For if technology is the highest rationalisation of the human being, artificial intelligence is its highest product and as such excludes a priori anything that is not function.
Artificial intelligence becomes at the same time the totem of the greatness of scientific technique (τέχνη in Greek means ‘expertise’ in the sense of ‘knowing how to do’) but, at the same time, the risk of human exclusion. It is wrong, Galimberti argues, to derive technique from science. Technique is the essence of science, as it is its highest peak achieved by man with the highest capacity for rationality.
Artificial intelligence does not found but calculates.
Source: ‘Infocracy’, Byung-Chul Han, Einaudi Editore, 2023
Man was faced with an impasse: on the one hand an epoch-making breakthrough as a result of his ingenuity and on the other the disquieting feeling of being the first object of exclusion. Hence Heidegger’s phrase‘Everything works. That is precisely what is disquieting, that it functions and that functioning always pushes one further towards further functioning.“
How to solve the riddle
It would seem that the human being has arrived at a crossroads where either he saves himself, or he saves the scientific technique. The rationality of scientific technique replaces discursive learning and, finding himself in this opposite condition, the human being must choose ‘what to save’. Before considering a possible way forward, however, it is necessary to take a step back.
There is a curious parallel that could be argued about Plato’s philosophy: the Greek philosopher is considered, to all intents and purposes, the turning point for modern philosophy. Plato spoke to us, exemplifying much, of two dimensions of the human being. The hyperuranium (beyond the heavens) as the dimension in which ideas are formed and a ‘sensible world’ in which these ideas are realised as copies. In essence, if one imagines the realisation of a rectangular piece of furniture, it is because the idea of the rectangle exists in the mind. The sensible world copies, i.e. imitates, the hyperuranium. In today’s modern society, Han says, algorithms imitate arguments (think of the famous imitation game from which Alan Turing took his cue). After centuries, Plato’s philosophy changes its appearance, re-proposing a double dimension but with more disturbing effects to quote Heidegger himself. Man, in fact, has realised (or believes he has realised) what Plato called agathon, or the supreme instance, and has done so through the megiston mathema (the supreme science). Karl Jaspers in this regard will write:
No effort is great enough to reach it. It is the only thing that matters. Its object is good (agathon).
Source: ‘The Great Philosophers. K. Jasper’, by F. Costa, Longanesi, Pg. 359
At present, there is no solution for man to find the right balance between scientific technique and man’s own existence, what Heidegger calls in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-the-world). According to Heidegger, the lack of solution stems from a language that has been compromised by the technical management of life. Words, in essence, are incapable of restoring to the human being that dimension of ‘being-in-the-world’ in what philosophers call, precisely, Weltanschauung.
According to Heidegger, ‘other words’ are necessary, which he tries to look for in the poem, but here a necessary clarification needs to be made. When Heidegger analyses Hölderlin’s poetry, he does so with a precise aim that he describes in this way: ‘Hölderlin’s poetry is a destiny for us‘. The poet in fact is the one who, in a free manner and not bound by scientific technique, is able to discover and produce new words and a new language capable of forming a different, new ‘sensible world’ in which man can once again discover the Weltanschauung.
Conclusions
Part of this new language is created by the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who in his book ‘The Non-Things’ speaks of infomes as agents that process information and artificial intelligence transforms things into infomes according to the philosopher. The society of artificial intelligence, according to Han, is a society that derealises the world through the process of computerisation.
The human being is advancing swiftly in an information-driven time but where the space for self is severely challenged by the self-created hyper-technical model. A rethinking of the human position in this paradigm is probably necessary. Han speaks of the awe lost for a digital photo, for something perceived as limited, finite, earthly, and perhaps this dimension is the right one.
