6. The Ongoing Reprogramming

The efficacy of AI contributes to the dissemination and apparent confirmation of the doctrines it stems from. This is how we came to speak of techno-logy, whose suffix should reserve the word to a study or a discourse; this is a philological mistake but a philosophical assertion—computerized techniques are implementing a dogmatic program. Without uttering a word, AI was telling us what we should do and be; now that it “speaks,” profusely, its indications are louder. Aside from a very well-orchestrated PR campaign, why was there in 2023 such an overwhelming reaction, especially in the United States, to the circulation of a few cherry-picked texts outputted by ChatGPT? Were these fragments brilliant, original, meaningful, significant, beautiful? Not really, but our collective habituation to mediocrity and our intellectual numbness undoubtedly prepared us to be more receptive to the onslaught of automated completions. At this stage, virtually none of them would strike us as being remotely “intelligent” if we had not already contributed to our reprogramming. Generative systems are another step down a road we took some time ago. In particular, the globalized technologies of communication constantly downsize and colonize our noetic space.

The ordering of computerized exchange, instant response, status updates, and other electronic buzz first destroys focus. Multitasking, for instance, is a lure, and repeated experiments have established that the more we divide our attention when pursuing even simple media activities, the looser we are in terms of performance and the happier we feel about ourselves and our failing abilities.1 Along with our divided attention, the stream of connection and disconnection we subject ourselves to when answering a dubiously urgent email, checking a post on a social network or the news, and picking up the phone makes it almost impossible to be durably immersed in high-level mental occupations. The objectifying stream goes against the subjective flow.2 If we no longer have the experience of being lost in a book or a movie, we are missing what thinking and the arts could procure—not only a temporary subtraction from this world and an associated elation (alcohol and entertainment would provide as much) but also the means to bring something back from this trip, something that will change us and make our lives more livable. This differs from the algorithmic machinery of “social” media and the brain addictions it fosters. The electronic and communicational sphere is, indeed, a mode of direct intervention on the working of our minds. Its, oft-neglected, physical infrastructure pollutes the environment and wastes resources to an amazing degree. But the mental pollution and waste at the level of its human superstructure, another material reality, is unequaled. We concretely feel the strife each time we fight within ourselves to finish reading a poem or continue our reflection and must resist the temptation to look at our portable screen or open the interface. Dissatisfaction, depression, psychological frailty are not unfortunate side effects of our social computerization but the price to pay for not thinking and for living within the frontiers the machinery assigns to us.3

Our hooked brains being cracked open by the sterile interruptions of the organized communicational, we are readier than ever to be reprogrammed. “User-friendliness” is a sardonic label when so many platforms elect to make you conform to their configuration. If the social media are dominated by identity-based parlance in a way that inevitably spills over all aspects of collective existence, it is because the reiteration of what one is supposed to be (with all sorts of associated features) is being prompted nonstop and encouraged by a system of public speech that favors the repetition of the same, due to software limitations and to marketing decisions (tell me what you are, I’ll sell you what you need). Human content providers, if they wish to be visible in the indistinct mass of information and to appear among the recommendations of an application or website, must operate within the perceived rules of the selecting algorithms. These providers are successful in proportion to their recognizability for a metric whose complete parameters are unknown even to its owners. As a whole, it looks like vulgarity, rants, conformity, and the absence of thought tend to be selected more easily, for maximum resonance; they could even help you become elected president. Conformity, naturally, is the main paradigm of social media, but, with growing numbers of users and applications, it could be multiplied, with each subgroup defending its own purity of sameness, opposing the other camp out of principle, and culminating in electronic mobs. Multiple conformism has nothing do with pluralism or with dialogue. The election of monologue as the optimal genre for Web 2.0 was no accident.

There, we encounter the disturbing phenomena that many commentators of the media usually prefer to focus on, such as the fast spread of anything (even the most blatant lie), the ensuing cancelation, the related surveillance. All these are absolutely valid concerns. However, it is important to note they are not the sole function of, say, capitalism or of, say, the surveillance state. Different political and economic regimes could transcribe the same logic by divergent means. Moreover, while I am willing to denounce censorship by a tech company or by its congregated users, there should be no faith in the emancipatory capabilities of the current organization of electronic expression. The only online emancipation we could witness is of subjects “dismantling” the elocutionary space they would temporarily inhabit.4 If we were to prevent mass trolling as well as the automated ban on supposedly unacceptable content, if companies and states stopped collecting data on web browsing, the actual progress this would bring would not, by itself, modify the overall redisposition of our minds.5

It is hard to avoid the impression that the invasion of human noetic experience by such technologies is but a late category of the modern project and intimately related to movements of normalization, standardization, and bureaucratization. At any rate, on all continents, such processes are manifestly supportive, and commonly productive, of the computerization of life. Modernization was not destined to introduce the smartphone, but—against pseudo-anarchist takes on the individual empowerment through the internet or the superficial resistance of the cyberlibertarians—the tech industries and the well-ordered policing of existence are a wonderful match. Thus, if we aim to rethink the humanities in the time of AI, our critique should extend to the very concepts of the normative, the ordinary, the measurable, and it is simply impossible to sustain that the letters, en bloc, would have little role in establishing these. The following temptation, in response to the supremacy of the regular, could be vouching for absolute transgression, if it were. This is another impasse. The exception is the deviation of, and from, the rule. The pure extraordinary immediately morphs into its own order. The humanistic problem with AI is with the theoretical and practical annihilation, at the very level of intellectual elaboration, of the potential significance of the abnormal. It is not that we should value “solar madness” against cold rationality; the purpose is to make the excess meaningful.6 This will rarely be achieved in an online post or a mental asylum.

One question, though: if the ongoing reprogramming is so extensive and perilous, if it is being constantly operated upon our brains by our technological devices, wouldn’t it be more expedient to kill the machine? I will not hide my fondness for the neo-Luddite position, and, anecdotally, it is true that I have no cell phone, no television, no car, no social media account.7 One could undoubtedly be more radical than that. Yet, the error would be to believe that the device is the only problem and that its sole destruction is beneficial, whereas a consequential Luddite action would aim to suppress the intellectual machinery that allows the machine. Would this be achievable? Understandable? Perceptible? In some apocalyptic future—not the likeliest, though not impossible—entire series of events, such as a lack of access to energy and other material resources, might lead to the actual crumbling of Big Tech as we know it and to the disappearance of at least the recreational use of AI. (I have a harder time imagining that the situation would deteriorate to the point that the fortresses of power would let go of their favorite gadgets. In that scenario, the present book would probably no longer be extant or readable.) Luddism now being a function of circumstances, it would make no sense without giving way to a more thorough interrogation of what once was, and could still continue to be, the allure of the cyborg.8