THE TYRANNY OF ALGORITHMS by Miguel Benasayag (2019)
★ ★ ★ ★ .5 - a challenging but informative & thought-provoking read!
“Some claim that the digital world embodies a complete positivity that is already possible. But from my phenomenological point of view, "negativity" is the central axis and even the condition of existence: it is evoked by what, today, we identify as the irrational, the instinctual, the sacrificial, the sacred, and even bodies themselves in their complexity . . .”
title: The Tyranny of Algorithms: Freedom, Democracy, and the Challenge of AI
author: Miguel Benasayag (“a philosopher & psychoanalyst of Argentine origin, a former resistance fighter active in the wake of Che Guevara”)
interviewer: Régis Meyran
published: 2019
publisher: Europa Compass
genre/subgenre: philosophical nonfiction—interview structure
setting: our modern world
main themes/subjects: AI, rationalism, living (as literally & fundamentally as possible) in the present as our guide to new action (i.e. transcendence as possible only through immanence), anti-promises, colonization by vs hybridization w the machine, democracy & democratization, the governmentality possibilities & impossibilities of AI
summary/blurbs/premise: “One of [Benasayag’s] most decisive contributions to the current debate is his demonstration of the specificity of the phenomenon of lite: the human being is not analogous to a machine… [as well as] …the distinction he makes between functioning and existing. Since the dawn of humanity, technological objects have been hybridized with the human mind: it is we who have shaped them, but as we use them, they in turn shape our brain.” — from the Preface by Régis Meyran
“We have understood that we are not able to predict what will happen as a result of our acts. The future is unpredictable, but so is the past, since we cannot predict which parts of the past will be revived, either.”
my thoughts:
I definitely wouldn’t say I agreed with everything in this book, I didn’t even fully understand everything in this book to be honest, but it was extremely interesting & thought-provoking & well worth the effort of reading it. I will say reading it serendipitously alongside Ursula K LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness really helped orient me to the subject matter & to the philosophically curious mindset.
I was, however, particularly excited about seeing how the value of being present (i.e. mindfulness, awareness, embracing impermanence, letting go of what you can’t control, etc.) & the idea of “pulling on your own thread” played into Benasayag’s conclusions, which made me feel very positively inclined to accept his overall arguments even if I thought some of the middle bits were a bit overly convoluted (as academiaspeak always is tbh like why? feels gate-keepy… like, who is this for/to?). . . anyway. For a book that was ultimately kind of bleak considering the subjectmatter & where we are currently in our sociopolitical climate these elements actually made the reading experience overall kind of comforting & affirming one.
i would recommend this book to readers who enjoy dense philosophical discussions on questions of a sociopolitical & human behavioral nature, as well as themes of technological development, individual agency, & collective responsibility. this book is best read slowly, patiently, with a dictionary, highlighter, pencil, & notebook handy. 😁 Speaking of which, my quotes & annotations for this book would probably be more informative than my thoughts above if you’re curious.
“In my view, situational action against the colonization of the living being by the machine—and not against the machine itself—has to be transgressive. We must develop sites of dysfunctionality…
A certain way of using the machine has colonized us, and now it's up to us to construct experiences and practices of hybridization with technology that respect the singularity of the living being and of culture.”
final note: The writing style of this was book was low key ridiculous tbh though but it’s fine. 😆
CW // brief mention of the holocaust & gen/cide, trigger warning for ex-PhD students (iykyk)
season: i mean this book reads like school so … whenever your brain’s in the mood for that i guess (it made me think of this part from Gregory Maguire’s Wicked:“She waited for him on the appointed evenings, sitting naked under the blanket, reading essays on political theory or moral philosophy.”)
music pairing: whatever helps you super-focus—for me that’s my noise-cancelling headphones & dead. silence. OR like a library ambience asmr video or something…
further reading:
UNMASKING AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines, by Joy Buolamwini (2023)
THE ALIGNMENT PROBLEM: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian (2020)
AI SNAKEOIL: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference, by Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor (2024)
THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K Le Guin (1969) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Cybernetics and Ghosts” (1967) from THE USES OF LITERATURE by Italo Calvino
CYBERNETICS, OR GHOSTS?: Stories from Myth to A.I., edited by Michael Salu (2024)
THE DREAM HOTEL by Laila Lalami (2025)
ETHICAL KNOW-HOW: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition, by Francisco Varela (1988) —Benasayag says his (Varela’s) works “greatly influenced” him (Benasayag)…
ABOLITION DEMOCRACY by Angela Y Davis (2003) —another interview-structured sociopolitical philosophy work of short nonfiction
Umberto Eco, especially EXPERIENCES IN TRANSLATION (2003) & THE LIMITS OF INTERPRETATION (1990)
ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H Wilson (2011)
THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH by Philip K Dick (1964)
More AI books on my Storygraph TBR here. Might need to make a full post for all my AI-adjacent reads…
Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.
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“In a world subject to digital governance, the body is a stubborn obstacle. … the distinction between functioning and existing is essential: the living being exists, in contrast to the machine, which merely functions. …for science, bodies function, but they exist less and less.”
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Quotes, Notes, & Annotations…
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