📚 The Book by a Fictional AI Philosopher Becomes a Phenomenon
The recent book "Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the New Architecture of Reality" by Chinese philosopher Jianwei Xun has sparked significant discussion. The author defines "hypnocracy" as a societal system where truth is not directly suppressed but instead drowned in an overwhelming flood of information, making it nearly impossible to uncover the real facts. He accuses U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk of creating "parallel realities" through digital technologies.
However, the author's personality has stirred just as much controversy. A few months after the book's release, journalists discovered that philosopher Jianwei Xun does not exist. Italian philosopher Andrea Colamedici, credited in the book only as the translator, created his persona and the book using AI. Colamedici explains that his role is a metaphor. The figure of the Chinese philosopher allegedly living in Berlin serves as a meeting point between Eastern and Western cultures and different realities shaped by AI.
⌨️ How the Author Used AI
Colamedici used ChatGPT and Claude to write the book, but the chatbots did not write it for him. He employed an "antagonistic interaction" method. He asked AI to generate ideas and then critique those ideas from various perspectives, allowing Andrea to take a more comprehensive view of what was written. This is also how the philosopher teaches his students to use AI systems at the European Institute of Design.
"Artificial intelligence is a tool that we must learn to use, because if we misuse it—and 'misuse' includes treating it as a sort of oracle, asking it to 'tell me the answer to the world's questions; explain to me why I exist'—then we lose our ability to think," Colamedici notes.
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🟠 In Japan, a writer won a literary award for her novel written with the help of ChatGPT
