Éric Sadin and Artificial Intelligence as the greatest challenge of contemporaneity

Book review of Éric Sadin's book "Artificial Intelligence or the challenge of the century. Anatomy of a radical anti-humanism".

Abstract

In his review of Éric Sadin’s book Artificial Intelligence or the Challenge of the Century: Anatomy of a Radical Anti-Humanism, Julio Arroyo offers a critical and engaged reading that highlights the French author’s philosophical depth in addressing the impact of artificial intelligence on contemporary society. Arroyo emphasises how the author interprets digital development as a phenomenon that has ceased to be a mere tool and has become a truth-revealing force, capable of guiding human behaviour and decision-making with near unquestionable authority. According to Arroyo, the author denounces the anthropomorphic and automated nature of artificial intelligence, which not only emulates human cognitive abilities but surpasses them, establishing a new technoliberal order that threatens individual autonomy and critical thought. The review underscores the author’s concern with the internalisation of digital technology in all aspects of life, as well as his call to resist through alternative rationalities that embrace plurality and uncertainty. Arroyo values the author’s use of classical and contemporary philosophical references, though he notes a certain ambiguity in the book’s epilogue, where an allegorical figure — an octopus — questions humanity’s ambition to replicate intelligence. Although the book does not offer a direct political critique, Arroyo acknowledges it as a valuable theoretical cartography of the digital present, useful for understanding the ethical and existential challenges posed by artificial intelligence in an increasingly automated and alienated world.