“When readers discovered the truth about how the book was created, many were hurt. I regret it deeply, but it was necessary,” he says.
Wired interviewed Colamedici in an interview that studied the nuances of his project.
This interview was edited in terms of length and transparency.
Wired: What was the inspiration for the philosophical experiment?
Andrea Colamedici: First of all, I teach quickly thinking at the European Design Institute and I manage a research project on artificial intelligence and thought systems at the University of Foggia. Working with my students, I realized that they use chatgpt in the worst possible way: copy from it. I noticed that they lost their understanding of life, relying on artificial intelligence, which is disturbing because we live in an era in which we have access to the Ocean of Knowledge, but we do not know what to do about it. I often warned them: “You can get good grades and even build a great career with chatgpt to cheat, but you’ll become empty.” I trained professors from several Italian universities and many ask me: “When can I stop learning how to operate chatgpt?” The answer is never. It is not about graduating in artificial intelligence, but about How You learn while using it. “
We have to keep our curiosity alive using this correct tool and teaching it to act as we want. It all starts with a key distinction: there is information that makes you passive, which weakens your ability to think over time, and there is information that challenges you, which makes you smarter, crossing you outside the borders. In this way we should operate AI: as a interlocutor who helps us think differently. Otherwise, we will not understand that these tools are designed by enormous technology companies that impose some ideology. They choose data, connections between them and, above all, treat us as customers to be satisfied. If we operate AI in this way, it will only confirm our prejudices. We will think that we are right, but in fact we will not think; We will be digitally received. We can’t afford this numbness. It was the starting point of the book. The second challenge was to describe what was happening now. For Gilles Deleuze, philosophy is the ability to create a concept, and today we need modern to understand our reality. We are lost without them. Just look at the video of Trump Gaza – generated by AI – or provocations of characters such as Musk. We are broken without solid conceptual tools. A good philosopher creates concepts that are like keys that allow us to understand the world.
What was your goal in the modern book?
The book aims to do three things: aid readers become learning artificial intelligence, come up with a modern concept for this era and at the same time be theoretical and practical. When readers discovered the truth about how the book was created, many were injured. I regret it deeply, but it was necessary. Some people said: “I would like this author to exist.” Well, no. We must understand that we are building our own narratives. If not, the far right will monopolize narratives, create myths and spend our lives checking facts while writing history. We can’t allow it.
How did you operate artificial intelligence to aid you write this philosophical essay?
I want to explain that AI did not write an essay. Yes, I used artificial intelligence, but not in a conventional way. I have developed a method that I teach at the European Design Institute based on the creation of the opposition. It is a way of thinking and using machine learning in an antagonistic way. I did not ask the machine to write for me, but instead it generated ideas, and then I used GPT and Claude to criticize them, to give me the perspectives of what I wrote. Everything written in the book is mine. Artificial intelligence is a tool that we have to learn from, because if we operate it incorrectly – and “improper use” includes treating it as a kind of oracle, asking for “telling me answers to the questions of the world; explain to me why I exist” – then we lose the ability to think. We become stupid. For us, June Paik, a great artist from the 90s, said: “I use technology to hate her properly.” And we must do it: understand this because if we do not do it, he will operate us. AI will become a tool that Substantial Tech uses to control us and manipulate. We must learn to operate these tools correctly; Otherwise we will have a sedate problem.