Algorithms and ancient voices. Talking about Artificial Intelligence is practically unavoidable these days... What do we really have to be afraid of? It’s not the robots.
My latest on American Thinker.
Summer, at least in theory, is supposed to be the best time of year to reflect on ourselves and on the big questions of our age. Maybe it’s the warm weather, which is often more suitable for thinking than for acting, or maybe it’s simply the fact that many people are on vacation and finally have time to ponder things. Either way, talking about artificial intelligence (AI) these days is practically unavoidable.
For every intelligent and insightful thing we read or hear about this vast and complex topic, there are countless foolish or banal statements multiplying like the Gremlins in the 1984 movie. A novel like Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro, with its humanistic take on AI, is an example of the former; the constant oversimplifications that flood both old and new media are a perfect example of the latter.
One thing is certain: Talking about A.I. ultimately means talking about human beings. Because no technology, not even the most advanced, is ever just lines of code or clever algorithms. It always ends up reflecting our desires, our fears, our limits, and our hopes. It’s no surprise that in this era, where AI is rapidly permeating every part of our lives, we’re witnessing both excitement and dread, rooted in the age-old questions philosophers and poets have been asking for millennia: Who are we? What can we become? What is our destiny?
And so, looking back to the great thinkers and writers of the past feels not just interesting, but necessary.
Nietzsche, for instance, would probably smirk at some of the fear surrounding A.I. He spent his life urging mankind to fulfill its true potential — “Become who you are!” he said — and he’d likely argue that if it takes A.I. to free us from tedious chores, repetitive work, bookkeeping, or endless emails, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It might even be a kind of Dionysian liberation: Let the machines handle the paperwork so we can dance, create, or watch the sun go down.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great voice of American transcendentalism — a thinker whom Nietzsche greatly admired — would likely agree. He wrote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Emerson’s faith in the power of the individual and in human progress would not have been shaken by the challenges of A.I. He probably would have seen it as a tool to amplify human potential — so long as we remain true to our inner voice. Used wisely, A.I. could be an ally in our journey toward self-determination, not a tyrant.
Still, we can’t ignore the risks of intoxication — or of hubris. Technology, as Plato well knew, is a beautiful siren. But it can deceive us. It makes us believe we can do anything — even recreate consciousness itself. And yet it’s amusing to think that Plato, for all his brilliance, could never have imagined ChatGPT, deepfake videos, or algorithms that can write poetry or love letters. Even so, his question still floats in the air like a soul hovering in the realm of ideals: What is man? And what will we become when the machine speaks with our voice?
Let’s be clear, though: A.I. itself isn’t frightening. What’s frightening is humanity. Shakespeare understood this well. In Hamlet, he wrote, “What a piece of work is man!” Yes, marvelous and noble...but also treacherous, petty, and cruel. Deep down, we all know that the real monsters aren’t inside machines — they’re inside people. Nietzsche would call it our will to power. Or perhaps it’s simply our bloated ego, like that of the Roman emperor Tiberius, whom Montaigne mocked for caring more about his posthumous reputation than about living well among his contemporaries.
Dante knew this, too. He mapped out an entire journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise to show that human beings lose themselves — and find themselves again. If today we’re getting lost among bits and bots, perhaps it’s simply the same old selva oscura, where the right path is easy to lose. Who knows if an algorithm could ever serve as our Virgil and lead us out? Maybe so — at least when it comes to giving us directions home on Google Maps.
Of course, we need to stay vigilant. The danger is that we become so accustomed to comfort that we start outsourcing not only our tasks, but also our thinking, our critical spirit, and our memory of history — that we start treating the machine as an infallible oracle. It’s at moments like this that we hear Montaigne’s slightly melancholic humor reminding us, “I do not teach; I tell a story.” Well, A.I. tells stories, too. The problem is that it doesn’t necessarily tell the truth. And there lies a vast abyss, one that belongs less to the realm of technology and more to the domain of human judgment.
We shouldn’t buy into the idea of an AI-driven apocalypse. But we should absolutely be worried about an apocalypse of the human spirit — about people who stop asking questions. That’s the real danger. The biggest risk is giving up on asking who we are, why we live, and what we truly want. And if there’s one lesson that the classics — from Plato to Shakespeare, from Dante to Montaigne — teach us, it’s that doubt is life. That there’s no truth without contradiction. And that sometimes, as Sophocles said, “not knowing anything is the sweetest life.”
Perhaps AI will force us to redefine what it means to be human. Maybe it will make us smarter. Or lazier. Or both at once. But I’d like to believe we’ll learn to use it as a mirror in which to see ourselves more clearly, much like Montaigne in his tower, surrounded by his thousand books and the Greek and Latin maxims carved into the beams.
And there, perhaps, we’ll finally realize that if the future frightens us, it’s not AI’s fault. It’s ours. Because of our arrogance. Or our laziness.
It must be said that humanity has never been closer to becoming truly master of itself. We must just remember that machines can imitate many things — but not the sudden quickening of a human heart at the sight of a sunset, nor the mystery of a soul wondering why it exists.
