"Artificial Intelligence: The Noise of Machines and the Silence of Humans" - A column published in La Tribune Dimanche by the French Philosopher Gabrielle Halpern

The French philosopher Gabrielle Halpern published a column in the media La Tribune Dimanche in which she shares her vision of artificial intelligence, and more precisely of generative artificial intelligence. What does it reveal about our society and about our humanité? What could be its political consequences?

""One must imagine Sisyphus happy". It is with these words that Albert Camus concludes his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he revisits the tale of that valiant man condemned by the gods to push a rock up a hill for eternity, only for it to roll back down each time before reaching the summit. But if Sisyphus were to delegate his task to a machine, would we still imagine him happy? “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.” Thus humankind was cursed by God for having tasted the forbidden fruit. Is it not ironic that we have developed a tool—artificial intelligence—that strives precisely to help us circumvent these divine maledictions, by lessening the toil of labour and extending life through transhumanism? If artificial intelligence offers us a subtle way of eluding death and transferring our burdens to machines, can it truly be called a blessing?, Gabrielle Halpern

"A study conducted in a school, where pupils were invited to seek help either from artificial intelligence or from a classmate, revealed that most preferred to turn to the machine. The reason? “The machine won’t make fun of me.” When ChatGPT, Copilot or DeepSeek show more kindness than our parents, neighbours and colleagues, more patience than a teacher, more discernment than a human resources manager, more empathy than a doctor, and more attentiveness than a friend, does not generative artificial intelligence become a cruel mirror of our mediocrity? We human beings, who long ago abandoned the terrain of humanism, are we not profoundly hypocritical when we now cry out against the “great replacement” of humans by machines? The more we turn to artificial intelligence, the more evident it becomes that we are not merely delegating the sweat of our brow—but, unable to bear it ourselves, our very humanity", Gabrielle Halpern

"Current debates on AI are focused solely on the economic, geopolitical, ethical, and social dimensions of AI. Yet there is great danger in neglecting the political question it poses. With striking foresight, the philosopher Hannah Arendt reminded us that “what separated the Greeks from the barbarians was that they were together in the mode of speaking with one another.” Freedom, as the Greeks conceived it when they invented democracy, lay in living in the mode of speaking with others. But by confining politics within the paradigm of “rulers and ruled,” we lose sight of its very essence—the relationship between citizens themselves. Obsessed as we are with freedom and equality, we neglect fraternity, without which our Republic can only fail. What kind of fraternity, what “mode of speaking with one another,” does artificial intelligence offer us? When one turns for advice to a virtual assistant rather than to a colleague, a mother, a friend, a teacher, a doctor, a neighbour or a sister, do we not risk becoming mute and deaf to one another, drowned beneath the deafening clatter of our keyboards? The true question we must ask today is this: what will be the political consequence of our silence?", Gabrielle Halpern

To learn some more: https://www.latribune.fr/la-tribune-dimanche/opinions/opinion-intelligence-artificielle-quels-etres-humains-voulons-nous-devenir-par-gabrielle-halpern-philosophe-1017968.html

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