The Industrial Revolution amplified, or even created, the very notion of productivity in people’s minds; AI plays, and will play, a far more insidious role.
Homo Productivicus
In the crucible of our modern existences, blood ties are slowly, imperceptibly undoing themselves, like an old fabric fraying away. For we no longer discover ourselves except through the work of daily labor and the glow of productivity it projects. Work has usurped the throne once occupied by the family: it has become our mirror, our master, our identity. Thus, a large progeny, once a source of pride and wealth, now appears as an index of decline—for some, the stigma of a residual class; for others, an admission of an irremediable inability to shine in the professional arena.
If AI Worries You, You Are Right
AI will not only come to take away your job, nor the fragile prestige attached to it; it risks undermining the very foundations of your inner life, swallowing your sense of being useful and, for some, tarnishing the very desire to endure. Already, many are laying down their arms, standing apart from a mutation they behold as a technical and social hurricane against which they feel helpless. The English Luddites could still project their anger onto iron machinery, breaking it to give themselves the illusion of suspending time. Today’s dissidents, however, face only clouds of servers scattered to the edges of the world, entrenched in invisible fortresses. This revolution no longer asks for permission: it will happen, and the silhouettes it leaves on the wayside will be legion.
Moving from Uselessness to Detachment
As long as you allow yourself to be locked into the idea that your being is summarized by your output, the near future can only be a source of suffering for you—all the more acute because few, in truth, will manage to “succeed” in it. The only true reclaiming of power consists in becoming a philosopher once more, in rising to the level of those men and women who, in the past, weathered crises by retaking possession of their thought rather than passively enduring their era.
In an Uncertain World, Some Things Remain Certain
Buddhism, Stoicism, and Taoism are the children of time immemorial: more than two millennia have passed since their emergence. Yet, this longevity owes nothing to chance; it cries out to those who can hear it that these wisdoms have proven their worth. Through revolutionary storms and the nameless chaos that followed one another, they persevered, crossing centuries as rocks resist the assaults of the sea. Their very permanence is a form of testament: they survived because they touched upon something essential in humanity.
A Trap Closing in on Everyone
It is unsettling to note how much artificial intelligence seems to follow the same curve in the lives of its admirers, whether they are seasoned experts or mere laypeople. It all begins with an almost childlike enthusiasm for the unprecedented powers of this new technical magic. Then the days, months, and years reveal the flip side: insidious, sometimes toxic effects that creep into work, relationships, and one’s relationship with oneself. The wonder cracks, giving way to a dull doubt, then to fear, and sometimes to a form of metaphysical vertigo. The tempo varies from one individual to another, but the final melody is often the same: a diffuse anxiety that now colors the way we look at this technology.
It Intends to Be Here Forever
What usually soothes us in the face of certain technological trends is the feeling that they are merely passing fads, destined to dissolve in the flow of time. With artificial intelligence, however, there is no such thing: no one truly deludes themselves with this illusion. Everyone confusedly senses that it will accompany us until the end of our lives, and that it will leave its mark, a little more each year, on the very shape of our existence.
The Fear of Being Seen Only as a Useless Being
If, over the last few centuries, human satisfaction has gradually taken root in the ability to contribute to society through work and the education offered to children, this source of meaning is drying up in a world where AI is becoming omnipresent. One’s share, compared to that of machines, seems thinner every day. To no longer feel useful through one’s work, trade, or art can only be deeply destabilizing. When an individual still manages to find meaning in solitude, it is always with the background certainty that society remains within reach. But how can one claim to build true meaning if one knows that a social fabric no longer exists around them? Such a situation would be nothing other than a return to the state of nature.
If Society Is No More, Man Is No More
AI does not stop at supplanting us in our tasks: by seizing our work, it does not merely replace an important part of our existence; it knocks down the first domino of our lives, triggering a cascade of direct and underground consequences. It removes what, until now, conferred status upon us and structured the very architecture of societies. With it, the rules of the social game falter and overturn; the game is no longer played according to the old codes.
Anxiety Is Amplified by Not Knowing How We Will Be Eaten
When the enemy is clearly designated, the horizon clears: one knows, at least, from which side the threat comes. AI, though cast as a potential adversary, does not yet reveal how it will make our lives more difficult. For now, what stands out are its apparent assets, starting with the promise of making us work less. But as time passes, it reveals itself less as a panacea and more as an authentic Pandora’s box. What curdles the blood is that almost all who have studied it closely converge on the same observation: AI is dangerous, and could well precipitate the end of humanity as we know it. There is enough there to fuel more than mere worry.
AI Strips Away Our Sense of Being Artists
AI will likely never supplant a Da Vinci or a Van Gogh; those summits belong to a form of singular genius that the machine can only imitate without truly inhabiting. On the other hand, it threatens to sweep away a large part of that vast intermediate zone populated by artists who, in any case, would never have truly brushed against posterity. Today, there is a crowd of creators who claim to be artists and whose works, in many cases, do not exceed—and sometimes do not even reach—the level of what AIs produce. On the field of quantity, the comparison is beyond appeal: humans cannot compete. AIs industrialize creation; can we still speak of art? I doubt it. But as soon as they pour out a continuous flow of images and forms of a quality comparable, or even superior, to those of humans, they contribute to devaluing the whole of what we call “artistic works.” Fundamentally, many graphic designers and illustrators were perhaps not artists in the strong sense, but rather artisans, since their way of producing is now proving to be industrializable. Their fate is not unlike that of the artisans of the late 19th century, whose craftsmanship, once automated, saw the value of their creations dissolve.
Stop Being an Artisan; Be Only an Artist
When machines in the 19th and 20th centuries replaced skilled manual workers, it was not good to be an artisan. The only viable refuge was to possess capital or to have skills that machines could not replace—typically those of the “notables” (lawyers, doctors, etc.). Today, even the notables are threatened, and all who trade in their knowledge—their advice and their expertise—are directly at risk. Nowadays, one must either have capital, be among the few hand-picked specialists capable of interacting with and serving AI, or be an artist—namely, being part of the 0.1% of one’s field. To build a cathedral, you need masons, a site manager, and an architect. Be the architect of your field yourself. If you cannot be the architect of your field, change fields.
