“When readers discovered the truth about how the book was created, many were injured. I regret it deeply, but it was necessary, ”he says.
Wired interviewed Coltedi in a conversation that explored the nuances of his project.
This interview has been modified for duration and clarity.
Wired: What was the inspiration for philosophical experience?
Andrea Colardici: First of all, I teach a rapid reflection at the European Design Institute and I direct a research project on artificial intelligence and thought systems at the University of Foggia. By working with my students, I realized that they used Chatgpt in the worst possible way: copy it. I observed that they lost an understanding of life by relying on AI, which is alarming, because we live in a time when we have access to an ocean of knowledge, but we do not know what to do with it. I often warn them: “You can get good grades, even build a great career using Chatgpt to cheat, but you will become empty.” I trained teachers from several Italian universities and many ask me: “When can I stop learning to use the Chatppt?” The answer is never. It is not a question of completing an AI education, but how You learn when you use it.
We must keep our curiosity alive while properly using this tool and teaching it to work as we want. It all starts with a crucial distinction: there is information that makes you passive, which erodes your ability to think over time, and there is information that challenges you, which makes you smarter by pushing you beyond your limits. This is how we have to use AI: as an interlocutor who helps us think differently. Otherwise, we will not understand that these tools are designed by large technological companies that impose a certain ideology. They choose the data, the connections between it and, above all, they process us as customers to be satisfied. If we use AI in this way, this will only confirm our biases. We will think that we are right, but in reality, we will not think; We will be kissed digitally. We cannot afford this numbness. It was the starting point for the book. The second challenge was how to describe what is going on now. For Gilles Deleuze, philosophy is the ability to create concepts, and today we need new ones to understand our reality. Without them, we are lost. Just watch Trump's Gaza video – generated by AI – or the provocations of characters like Musk. Without solid conceptual tools, we are shipwrecked. A good philosopher creates concepts that are like keys allowing us to understand the world.
What was your goal with the new book?
The book seeks to do three things: help readers to become literate, to invent a new concept for this time and to be theoretical and practical at the same time. When readers discovered the truth about how the book was created, many were injured. I deeply regret it, but it was necessary. Some people said, “I hope this author existed.” Well, he doesn't. We must understand that we build our own stories. If we do not do it, the extreme right will monopolize the stories, create myths and we will pass our lives to verify the facts while they write history. We cannot allow this to happen.
How did you use AI to help you write this philosophical essay?
I want to specify that the AI has not written the test. Yes, I used artificial intelligence, but not conventional. I developed a method that I teach at the European Design Institute, depending on the creation of opposition. It is a way of thinking and using automatic learning in a antagonistic way. I did not ask the machine to write to me, but instead, it generated ideas, then I used GPT and Claude to criticize them, to give me perspectives on what I wrote. All that is written in the book is mine. Artificial intelligence is a tool that we must learn to use, because if we abuse – and “abuse” understands treating it as a kind of oracle, asking him to “tell me the answer to the questions of the world; Explain to me why I exist ” – then we lose our ability to think. We become stupid. Nam June Paik, a great artist from the 1990s, said: “I use technology to hate him properly.” And that's what we have to do: understand, because if we don't do it, it will use us. AI will become the tool that Big Tech uses to control and manipulate us. We must learn to use these tools correctly; Otherwise, we will be faced with a serious problem.
