Fantômes dans la machine (l’hypothèse de l’anabase). Sur le programme algorithmique / Ghosts in the machine (the Anabasis hypothesis). On the algorithmic program
The text approaches the idea of “Artificial Intelligence” in relation to its applications and its context of emergence. Using the two concepts of apparatus and program, extensively used by Vilém Flusser, we envision AI as a program pretending to be a tool, a confusion engineered to mask a structural reorganization of human activities, under the idelological principles of cybernetics. This sleight of hand uses cognitive deception and religious patterns to ensure the success of a neo-Fordist take over human brains. Within that cybernetic program and a data-driven society, the freedom of the citizen cannot rely on a play with the apparatus, as apparatus are more and more integrated into each other. Among Flusser's writings, the play with the apparatus is a local solution, as in the case of photography or computer art. To envision a wider solution, we have to resort to another hypothesis suggested by Flusser to face the rise of programs, the idea of withdrawal. We will consider the latent possibilities of this seemingly disappointing idea, envisioning withdrawal as a movement that would be both backward and forward, as in the classical example of the Anabasis. Considering there are no more outside, in which one could build and conceive an alternative to the authority of the programs, withdrawal could be a vital and preliminary move to disappear from the scrutiny of a panoptical control. Images and visibility appear as a key component of this strategy, prolonging Flusser's view on the medium and opening new possibilities.