Jean Arnaud on AI and the Future
Philosopher Interviews
The advent of new technologies and artificial intelligence, with their profound philosophical, psychological, ethical, political, economic, and social implications, prompts us to reflect on human nature and technology, and to define the horizons towards which we are headed. We are honoured to print an interview with Jean Arnaud, a pioneer of the digital renaissance in the fields of art, philosophy, technology, and education. Jean Arnaud is an educator and entrepreneur at the helm of Nova, a company that develops artificial intelligence to accelerate research and combat disinformation. He is also a published author and artist.
New technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are poised to decisively transform the world we know, much like the steam engine that gave rise to the industrial revolution. The impact of AI can be felt across a multitude of domains.
In the realm of research, for example, AI, like the one we are developing with Nova, ensures researchers access to quality scientific literature and, more importantly, tools capable of accelerating academic research. On a larger scale, the impact of AI involves the development of search engine models based on verified information. In education, the use of intelligent mentors — namely, AIs associated with avatars in VR, AR, holographic versions, or robots capable of assisting students in their learning — has caused a fundamental paradigm shift in personalized learning, allowing students to escape from mass education that has been catastrophic for our democracies. Every citizen must be trained to think, analyze, and create, and must have reached their full potential to participate in the larger community. To put it more philosophically, one must be “rich” in self to be able to give.
In its function of providing assistance and giving advice, AI obviously enables greater performance (which is something society expects from workers, but this is still a philosophy, and as such, a set of values that can always be contested) and will revolutionize the field of work with the creation of new professions — for example, prompt engineers — and with the disappearance of others, resulting in significant decreases in employment, like those recently announced by tech giants, in the name of productivity.
Because AI excels at probing the vast data we collect, which we are unable to use unassisted in order to best address specific problems, AI may be effectively employed in the transportation sector to improve route planning, reduce waiting times, and minimize congestion, for example, as well as in medicine to identify diseases and conditions more quickly and accurately.
Of course, the benefits of artificial intelligence should not overshadow the threats it poses, the effects of which are still poorly understood. These dangers are more insidious than those conveyed by Hollywood dystopias, exaggerated for the sake of narrative dramatization. One danger, for example, might involve overexposure to the systematic patterns used by generative models such as ChatGPT or Jasper, which could have a significant cognitive impact. Influencing language is influencing thought, and language models, coupled with an inherent laziness in human nature or perpetuated by our technologies or educational models based on passivity, could lead to a narrowing, rather than an expansion, of human horizons to a standardization of style and ideas. Isn’t this already a trend we can observe with information bubbles tending to restrict a myriad of passions to a few areas of interest?
If the fault is indeed human because it is still up to the user to explore the multiple subjects of their interests, fault also lies with the technology itself, or rather with its philosophical vision, the more or less affirmed will of its entrepreneurs, and also of the researchers and engineers they employ. For example, generating greater revenues by promoting algorithms designed to maintain activity on the application, i.e., to exploit its addictive tendencies rather than its real potential — increasing its power of being — is all too often behind the vision, the philosophical idea, of the technology. Or if you prefer to say it differently, the will (every will is subjective; even if it claims objectivity, it carries with it a set of values and beliefs, as well as a metaphysical background that guides its action and determines its result, whether in an artistic work or an intellectual production) that presides over the development of a technology is the value by which it can be measured.
New technologies such as AI invite us to examine numerous inquiries that are not merely philosophical but are also ethical and sometimes very practical, considering the profound changes they introduce into society, which are at least as significant as those witnessed during the industrial revolution. The question of what we are — what defines us as human beings, what constitutes our nature — arises when we find ourselves in the presence of a creation that we have desired and shaped in our image, a creation that is intelligent. We must not forget that artificial intelligence is only one possible interpretation of human intelligence, one that is actually of a completely different nature. It also does not obey the same mechanisms and, ultimately, does not have the same functions or the same intentions. The fact that artificial intelligence excels in the execution of certain specific tasks almost inevitably leads to the thought that it will be capable of replacing human intelligence, but it is precisely its virtues — its extraordinary analytical abilities — that potentially make it an exceptional ally. It is still up to the human being at work in the machine, the modeler, to decide — at least as long as AI is not endowed with a will of its own, that is, as long as it does not have the ability to decide for itself or to reform itself. Right now, that concept still belongs to the realm of science fiction.
The actual state of technological advancements regarding AI has taught us, above all, just how much human beings — because we are alive and in perpetual transformation, because we are never just static entities but always in a state of becoming — differ from the machine. A machine’s potential for evolution depends on external adjustments, on human intervention. This makes the true modeling of its intelligence, which would require a deep and precise understanding, complex, and demonstrates how such modeling is illusory and chimerical. This other entity that is artificial intelligence, at once both lesser and more than human intelligence, can be employed to increase our knowledge, to perfect our tools, and to extend our intellectual or artistic ideas.This is the horizon towards which we navigate, one that constitutes the fundamental existential question, these forthcoming skies that we still need to determine and shape with our visions. It is here that philosophy no longer asserts itself merely as a mode of inquiry; philosophy also becomes a means of evaluating and creating, since it falls to the free and sovereign mind to define the values capable of embodying the ideal type of human being to which our time aspires. Because everything calls us to greater responsibility, the very responsibility we desired when we emancipated ourselves from the ancient gods — perhaps this is the eloquent lesson of the ancient myth of Prometheus or of Shelley’s Frankenstein — it is absolutely necessary to consider the human being who is to come, the one we desire to see emerge, and the future world of which they will be the embodiment—one that we still have to build. Everything we create still bears much of ourselves, which is why, without wanting to dominate the development of all our thoughts, all our productions — intellectual, artistic, and technological — it is still possible for us to guide this process in an enlightened manner, taking into account what we desire, what comprises our will, the requirements of the reality with which every idea must deal.
However, we must also try to envisage the imprints that every new existence leaves upon the world and all the possible ramifications (it would be illusory to claim that we can entirely dominate and control them). Everything we produce also escapes us (perhaps that is the other major reflection we can draw from the two myths mentioned previously). This is precisely what the dramatic consequences of climate change have taught us.
While it is certain that the emergency situation in which we find ourselves today can be attributed to our refusal to heed the words of scientists since the 1970s and to consider carefully the data they presented, it is also probable that this situation may be the result of a blindness to the impact of a philosophy of greed on both individuals and society as a whole (the philosophy in which self-interest alone prevails founds the entire traditional Western capitalist model, which is devoid of moral conscience): a society of consumption and entertainment, deeply unequal, with minds, characters, and feelings impoverished in appearance, flight, and self-diversion. To flee, to take refuge in willful blindness, in convenient and culpable silence, is to decide to abandon the responsibility of meaning that is the province of humanity; it is to agree to enslave the power of the will not to the yoke of the indifference of nature or the world (the world is much more than a mere phenomenal entity, at least for the human being; it is a humanized phenomenon — interpreted, intellectualized, and therefore subjectivized. If there is an objective being of the world, it can only be dynamic, in motion and in perpetual transformation, a becoming, inaccessible to the being except as founding matter, a series of beings determining themselves in combination) but to that of a wholly human sense, determined despite oneself, through renunciation and wholly voluntary abdication. Everything in the human world is a choice, even silence (is silence not also, for example, part of music and does it not make even more music?).
By concentrating our intellectual and technological forces in the service of superficial material growth (not to say materialistic) and of a scientific progress without conscience, that is, without spirit and without taking the responsibility of a vision that we should have thought and defined in advance, we lose in substance, in depth, and in humanity. Humanism cannot do without science and art, and it cannot do without philosophy and ethics either, which give everything meaning (mind) and value (conscience).
Thus, without succumbing to the pessimism of the preachers of an apocalypse paralyzed by irrational anxiety or to the enthusiasm of the idealists whose faith embraces with an almost fanatical ardor all novelty without reflection, without the necessary distance for any decision to be rendered just and reasonable, we can imagine technology to be virtuous and beneficial when it is thought out, when it is used in the service of a philosophical vision aimed at increasing our capacity to question, to analyze, to judge, to create, to push the limits of what is possible without annihilating it by dire prediction or chimerical exaltation. The question of the limit and its beyond then becomes the center of philosophical and ethical inquiry because technology and the paradigmatic changes it introduces compel us to constantly rethink the state of our creations, and also that of societies, their potential developments, and their possible consequences. To what extent can these instruments trace the brighter lines of the horizons we want to see come to pass? It is still up to us to define that, since it is, in reality, thought that determines and projects a particular vision of being and of the world. With science, an idea takes root and embraces the dynamic phenomenon “world” (for the world is in constant motion and transformation), its probable reality (namely, our human interpretation of this world), and the technology that is used to accomplish it.
The widespread and rapid adoption of AI systems like ChatGPT and OpenAI’s DALL-E naturally compels society as a whole to deep reflection, which especially applies to governments and lawmakers who must understand the exact scope of the effects on an individual’s psychology and society as a whole in order to make effective policy decisions capable of addressing the transformations induced by these new tools, the ramifications of which are still difficult to measure and understand. According to a recent article in Forbes, citing a study conducted by Goldman Sachs, 300 million jobs could be eliminated by AI — considering the technology is intended to promote employee productivity and company competitiveness — before the job market can regain balance and enter into an era of possible growth with the emergence of new necessities and opportunities. It is up to our leaders to find solutions to prevent economic and social crises from developing, solutions such as subsidies for companies that choose not to lay off workers but to train them, the implementation of a universal basic income to prevent an increase in poverty and the accompanying scourges of crime, insurrection, and the rise of extremist and radical movements that preach division by seeking scapegoats rather than solutions, or even taxes on these technologies. To facilitate this, it is necessary to regulate developments and, without slowing them down, ensure that their effects can be controlled. This is the challenge outlined in the regulatory charters that Europe has embraced by organizing roundtable discussions with experts, in which my co-founder Michaela Jamelska was fortunate enough to participate.
We must also address the ethical aspect of the psychological pressure on employees associated with the adoption of AI, as it now seems clear that any resistance to the technology will almost inevitably lead to dismissal. A worker who refuses to use AI will have to work harder to achieve the same result as someone who effectively uses it to serve their goals. What was once a choice is no longer so or will, at least, become a choice that is difficult to stand by. From an ethical perspective — and from a humanistic one — this imposed adoption is debatable, perhaps even intolerable. The energy consumption of AI poses another significant challenge, as it adds to all the other recent technologies already identified as energy-intensive and necessarily calls for new inventions or discoveries to address it. We can add identity theft to this non-exhaustive list, and all the possible negative consequences, particularly with the production of fake images and misinformation, which could lead to the rapid adoption of blockchain technology on one hand and the establishment of a digital identity on the other. It now seems obvious that the free internet, which was already a fiction, will become increasingly controlled with more severe and significant sanctions (among victims of digital discrimination, there often exists a terrible and legitimate feeling of injustice, while tech giants such as Google set an infamous example of impunity).
In the field of education, several of us have identified future beneficial developments of AI — for example, an intelligent mentor capable of guiding students in reflection, understanding, planning, and providing personalized education in which the student becomes the actor of their own learning — but we have also identified certain risks associated with the use of AI, precisely because instead of promoting an active and reflective approach, its use could encourage passive behavior. Instead of stimulating reflection and a journey towards possible answers (a reflective approach) when a question is asked, these tools only provide a single, unambiguous answer (a dogmatic approach). When assertion takes the place of doubt and inquiry, there is a real risk of a decline in thought. To prevent AI from becoming a substitute and to encourage its conscious use for educational purposes, that is, as an assistant capable of enhancing our intellectual and artistic faculties, it will be necessary to imagine a more reflective and philosophical approach, one similar to Socratic maieutics, which consists of questioning one’s interlocutor to guide one in one’s thinking and encourage one to develop their own thoughts. It is with this philosophy that some companies strive to develop interactive rather than generative artificial intelligence systems, such that are substantial and based on verified information, and with which everyone can co-construct and co-create.
It would take too long here to discuss all the challenges our society faces with AI, but among them, we can mention the respect for private data (there is a serious concern that our images will be captured by surveillance cameras and processed by AI without our consent), and the protection of intellectual property, which has been compromised by AI systems whose training is based on opaque and sometimes protected material. This has recently led The New York Times to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement.
Thus, AI has prompted us to question what was once accepted as obvious, but that which does not necessarily hold true, the very notion of intellectual property. The debate over the legitimacy of claiming ownership of a work is intensifying because if a creation truly reflects the distinctive spirit and inner world of its creator, as well as their intense labor and investment, we must acknowledge that each work is actually the culmination of a sequence of prior thoughts, efforts, and productions. Nothing comes from nowhere, and every work is, to a certain extent, a recombination, a recomposition.
When the artistic process is stripped of its mystifying cloak, it can be understood that the criticisms leveled at AI in the artistic domain, if not unfounded from an ethical point of view, are based on perhaps an illusory conception of the creative process. Far more than inspired by the ancient tradition of poet-hierophants, the old Vates, those mouths through which the whispers of the heavens and supra-celestial wills pass, all intellectual and artistic production is inspired. It is a legacy that is carried higher, tinged with the hues of each individual’s soul. Much more than talent is needed to define the depth or beauty of a work; it is the act of working on oneself, the sculpting of oneself and of the world, the ability to create oneself while creating; it is the capacity to perceive the invisible richness of worlds, as Rilke suggested (in Letters to a Young Poet), to augment them by nurturing their fruits within oneself; it lies in one’s own physiological transformation, the result of an ontological quest to which all paths of immense creation lead; it is in the spirit’s condition and its philosophy, in a true art of being, living, thinking, and creating, that the value of a work is found; It is due to the thinker or artist’s ability to grasp worlds, to imprint them with the notes of their soul, and to enlarge them into “universes”.
If the condition of the mind that presides over a creation determines the intellectual and aesthetic excellence of a work, or to phrase it differently, if the soul — that is, “the self” in the process of becoming, embraced and deepened by “the me,” and powerfully incarnated — contributes more to art than mere talent does, then the poetic intention present in a textual prompt may result in a pictorial and artistic work that is more intriguing than what a talented image creator can produce.
The fact is that true artists are rare — it is already Gogol’s critique in his Mysterious portrait — and it may be good that they can access other forms of art that were previously closed off to them (other than through collaboration). AI opens up, rather than closes, perspectives: A poet can now be a painter, and a painter can be a poet by using a textual prompt to produce images, for example, or a visual prompt to produce text. This symphonic or synesthetic approach allows us to transcend the idea that reduces art to mere craftsmanship since, as we have noted, it is obviously much more than that.
In reality, generative AI tools for art are just instruments that intellectuals and artists can choose to employ in service of their vision, or choose to ignore, just as composers have known for many years that one can create music without actually knowing how to play all the instruments one uses — as long as one knows the software and how to manipulate it. A different notation replaces traditional codification. A new path is opened for creation. Have these software tools replaced instruments? Rather they have been added to other methods of composing music. Addition does not necessarily lead to elimination. The new does not fatally replace the old; and sometimes it can enrich it. These new technologies have given non-musicians (in the traditional sense) the opportunity to be excellent composers, and now allow non-writers to become poets or artists. Those who lacked the language can now bring their ideas to life and may replace the dusty skeletons from academies who know how to write but whose writing is bland and lackluster, devoid of ideas and spirit. AI is ultimately just another tool, one that must be learned and used with purpose. As for the approach to AI itself, I believe in interactive engagement rather than mere generation, that is, in co-creation, in employing AI as an assistant, an ally in creation.
It is by building with artificial intelligence that the fields of our own determination are opened, the entirety of which we are composed and which constitutes the matter from which the questioning being, the analyzing being, the interpreting being, and the creating being incessantly draw. It is the foreign, the diverse, the unknown that we reclaim by readjusting, by reweaving differently what AI has proposed. It is by using AI in its suggestive function that we can expand our ideas and artistic visions. Charged with this novelty, we decide to work differently, to throw ourselves fully into “the Open” to use a term dear to Heidegger, and to make it bloom anew with our own colors. Again, it is up to philosophy to define what we mean by a work of art and the spirit that characterizes our era. The challenge of AI is still, and above all, a human one, precisely because it can make us more human or superhuman. Technology is only as valuable as the spirit that guides it. Only by grounding ourselves in humanistic existentialism can transhumanism lead to a Nietzschean “superhumanism” that is, to an enhanced humanity that has become what it could be at its most accomplished. We must think about the future being and the world before we can create them.
As I mentioned earlier, technology compels us to question and rethink existing paradigms, making us consider that what we thought was the truth might have only been a perspective, a possible interpretation of reality and existence. We share with the beings of the Renaissance these philosophical inquiries, which at the time were provoked by the great discoveries of explorers but also, and above all, by the rediscovery of ancient knowledge due to the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire, and the arrival of scholars in Europe. A new world was opening up beyond the limits of the one we thought we knew, and ancient texts offered reflections profoundly different from that of the triumphant vision of a certain Christianity consecrated by the Church. As happened in their time, our certainties are shaken, and we have been forced to find answers within ourselves, and also to find them in the past, by opening ourselves to other perspectives. Perhaps therein lies the explanation for the renewed interest in ancient philosophers like Heraclitus, Marcus Aurelius, or Seneca. It is also understood that, to expand our horizons and the field of possibilities, we must also be more versatile, build bridges between knowledge domains, and surpass what constituted the limit in each domain. However, the enthusiasm that those living during the Renaissance must have felt when the ancient world collapsed and a new world was defined (an enthusiasm that later resurfaced with positivism and faith in science as the source of progress in the 19th century) is still limited in our time because we have experienced “the age of suspicion,” to borrow Nathalie Sarraute’s expression, the use of technologies for deadly and disastrous purposes, such as the atomic bomb when nuclear fission promised scientific progress with multiplied energy.
Since Camus’s writings, abdicating responsibility for the world has become an untenable position. If nature is indifferent and has no inherent meaning, it is up to us to create one because human beings give meaning even when they claim not to. Victory, therefore, lies not so much in having annihilated our gods or freed ourselves from our idols — which often leads to the worship of other statues, other dogmas (a point that is still debatable as we may devote ourselves to the gods of Money, Utility, Truth, Order) — but rather in our ability to define what makes us free, sovereign, and powerful.This means that the persistence of effort present in the being journeying towards this new star, the will in this being, will always become more than itself.
Thus, we learned with Hiroshima and Nagasaki that technology is nothing but the reflection of our will. If we aspire to a more enlightened world, then we must be more consistent in our own selves when we invent. The digital renaissance is thus not solely technological; it is also, and primarily, philosophical.
Indeed, it is not surprising to witness engineers, entrepreneurs, philosophers, artists, and scientists collaborating in the most advanced laboratories around the globe. Our datasets are overwhelming, our brains incapable of sustaining the mythic genius that once served more for show than for advancement and perseverance when cultivating a “greater being” — an existence that is enriched and enhanced.
The demands of expertise across various disciplines are such that although versatility is required and encouraged, mastery in multiple fields is not feasible. Thus, we find ourselves in a new era where versatile experts, with the aid of AI and supercomputers, collaborate, moving beyond the archetype of the lone genius whose brilliance should have always been stoked by the enduring flames of “labor.”
Because we creators are still the masters of our machines (even when we decide not to be), and because we want to develop our science with consciousness and responsibility, we must first define what we want for ourselves and for our societies. I believe this is embodied by my polyphonic and palimpsestic 3D statue in the metaverse, my Prometheus Ἑωσφόρος — the bearer of dawn — a human being driven by the idea of being more than himself and of creating a more enlightened world, rising towards new heavens to establish a new order. He puts at the service of his highest purpose: his love, his will and determination, his reason, his imagination — and with them their most sacred products: philosophy, science, technology, and the arts.
A new era calls for new beings, and Prometheus Ἑωσφόρος rises, matured by and beyond himself, erecting pillars to reign in the heavens with all his light, while remaining deeply rooted in the true meaning of the earth. Like many, we can no longer tolerate a capitalism without conscience, a technology devoid of morality, a progress without spirit, which has led us to consume ourselves as well as our environment, to become our own predators and our own peril. The model must be reconsidered, and we will only rethink it with the help of an AI capable of analyzing with greater precision the entirety of the data we possess and have accumulated in recent years. It would be beneficial to have, alongside our dystopias that merely exaggerate the features of an interpreted present and draw the most dramatic implications from it, utopias that demand a force of invention that is philosophical, artistic, scientific, and technological, especially when we aim to realize them.
Far from opposing each other, these two activities complement and enrich one another.
Reflection leads to more effective action. Entrepreneurship is the will to enact a thought. It is the transition from theory to practice. Without theory and reflection, concrete production lacks substance. Without practice, thought cannot truly mature and affect the world, because it must be rooted in the world in order to impact it. Novalis poses an excellent question in Heinrich von Ofterdingen: What value can thought have when it is detached from any form of reality? Here it is only an intellectual game, which may suffice, but I believe the world is our responsibility, and if thought, science, art, and technology can elevate us as beings, they must then aspire to what transcends us, producing beyond that which is greater than ourselves — humanity. Above each individual, humanity still shines (Soliloquies).
How about posing a question: What is the purpose of creation if not to amplify our strengths and our humanity? To think before acting, that might just be the one thing we truly need to do.
Jean Arnaud is a pioneer of the digital renaissance in the fields of art, philosophy, technology, and education. He is a Stanford University alumnus and former literature and philosophy professor at Université Côte d’Azur. He is also entrepreneur at the helm of Nova, a Boston-based startup (USA) that is developing an AI application to accelerate academic research and detect misinformation and forgery in scholarly papers. Jean Arnaud is a board member of La French Tech Boston (USA) and Blockchain Innovation in Cannes (FR). He is also a member of the Rotary Club Cambridge and FACCNE. Additionally, Arnaud is a digital artist, a published author, and a speaker at venues like Harvard, SXSW, French Library, and NFT NYC.
- Contact: jean@novavirtualworld.com
- Nova: www.novavirtualworld.com
- Website: www.jeanarnaud.com
- Video
- Other publications: Reimagining Art through immersive technologies, The Future of Learning.
Cover image supplied by Jean Arnaud.
