As a joke, a friend commissioned ChatGpt to analyze my latest book. Indeed, three versions: positive, negative and somewhere in between. I have rarely found the same quality in “human” ones. But this is a problem
A person very dear to me, with curious perfidiousness, commissioned Artificial Intelligence to review my recently published book Nietzsche and Marx Holding Hands. Indeed, he commissioned three versions: one positive, one critical and one that highlighted the merits and defects of the work. With the shocking speed we know, OpenAi’s ChatGpt has churned out three truly remarkable readings, well written, better thought out, responsive to the text, with reasoned criticism and reasoned praise. Let me say that I have not read such good reviews, and not just of my book. Even the criticism supports arguments and judgments that I don’t agree with, but which are serious, credible and in any case motivated.
The laudatory review underlines the “clear and incisive” style and the “bold and clarifying” content of the text, which “does not indulge in simplifications or academic forcing”, removes Marx and Nietzsche from ideological caricatures and restores their complexity and their legacies. «It does not offer easy solutions, but asks essential questions… A book recommended for those who seek in philosophy not an abstract refuge, but a lens to understand the world in which we live».
The criticism instead accuses the essay of being ambitious but of resulting in a rhetorical exercise of ideological dissemination. The convergence between the two authors, in his opinion, is stated but not rigorously demonstrated. «The result is a narrative that proceeds by analogies, sometimes suggestive, but often arbitrary» which flattens their profound differences. The style «often celebrated for its clarity, is here also a limit. The writing, elegant and assertive, tends to replace argument with aphorism, producing a more emotional than rational persuasion effect… Philosophy, rather than questioned, is narrated.”
The chiaroscuro reading recognizes the author’s merit in facing the comparison “without shyness, with a recognizable style and a strong intellectual personality”; makes complex concepts accessible. But, on the other hand, Marx and Nietzsche seem more symbolic figures than thinkers; seductive prose, brilliant and assertive style but “aphorism often takes the place of analysis”. Furthermore, the book does not intend to be an academic text, note, nor does it claim to be neutral, but leans towards an interpretation, and this is its merit and its limitation. Ultimately it is “a work of civil reflection that uses philosophy as a tool to question the present”. I don’t happen to read reviews that are so precise in their praise and criticism. Usually we read hasty a priori judgments or banal “hustlers”. Critical readings have decreased, or rather readings in general, almost no one “wastes time” anymore reading and understanding other people’s texts; almost no one dares to express severe and detailed judgments, just for the sake of truth. Both the civilization of criticism and the civilization of commentary disappear: previews, excerpts or interviews with the author are usually published about a book in order to bypass reading and mediation. It’s sad to admit that to have an honest and credible reading of a book you have to commission it from artificial intelligence. It remains a mystery where he draws those judgments from, and how he manages to make a synthesis of other people’s readings that is decidedly better than the ones he used. When we come to say that the book would have been better if AI had written it, then we will certify the superfluity of writing, and perhaps of thinking.
The topic, as you well understand, does not concern my book or even just books in general. It affects the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, between algorithms and critical sense, between style, choices, creativity and technology. But in the end the question that remains is one, with infinite implications: will AI save us or make us useless? That is, will she be the one to save the critical sense, to read the works, to make up for human shortcomings, and therefore to compensate for the progressive barbarization, the critical and mental annihilation that we are experiencing, or will she be the one to accelerate the decline and replacement of the human, atrophying the intellectual faculties used until now, if not actually pushing the human towards “renewed barbarism”, to put it with Vico?
Will technology make us more primitive and more animals and automatons, or will it push intelligence onto more refined and higher paths, hitherto attempted, leaving ordinary jobs to brain machines? The doubt is whether it is critical intelligence that wanes, thus leaving room for AI, or on the contrary whether it is AI that makes the thinking mind superfluous. What is the cause and what is the effect, or is it their intertwining? To make the question clearer, I return to the concrete example of the Ia review: we must be grateful to Artificial Intelligence which remedies the gaps, vetoes and inattentions of literary civilization, compensates for losses and human shortcomings and offers precious results to those who want to have solid knowledge and judgements; or is what it gives us, in reality, what it takes away from us, making the steps of reading and reflection superfluous, to the point of erasing them from our mental paths? Open question. In the meantime, let us cultivate the hope that the abolition or extinction of the critic at least does not prelude the abolition or extinction of the author.
In the end, will books make themselves, like reviews, and read themselves, without any more human readers?
