Last week, I spoke to you about ants, those discreet beings who keep the world standing while others parade on stage. This week again, I won’t be talking about artificial intelligence, robots, algorithms or generative AI…
Today, I am staying in this very human, very intimate vein. Still about us. Always about us. Because before understanding what machines do to our thinking, perhaps we first need to understand what we have done to our own ability to think.
This time, I am taking you into subtler, more unsettling territory: our relationship with our own ideas. A silent slide that concerns us all, connected or not, technophiles or technophobes.
I promise, from next week, I will resume my series “AI in All Its States”. But for now, let me talk to you a little longer about this strange thing that happens to us when we stop inhabiting our own questions…
You type a question into your search engine. In 0.3 seconds, you have your answer. Satisfying, isn’t it?
And yet… something strange is happening. This disconcerting ease may be hiding a deeper transformation in our relationship with thinking.
There was a time when searching was already an act. When not knowing straight away was not a problem to be solved, but a space to inhabit. Today, we glide from one answer to the next, from one pre-chewed piece of content to another. We approve more than we choose. We apply more than we understand.
But what happens when thinking becomes optional? Between the seductive efficiency of our tools and our old habit of thinking for ourselves, a silent slide is under way. Not brutal, not visible. Just… comfortable.
The question is not whether technology is good or bad. It lies elsewhere, closer to home: do we still recognise our own voice when we think?
Find the full transcript of this episode, along with all the sources and plenty more, at: Does free will still exist in an intermediated society?