Totalement inhumaine by Jean-Michel Truong, Le Seuil, 100 FF, ISBN
2846710171
IF YOU decide to write on a subject as momentous as what kind of intelligence
may succeed humanity, publish in Paris. There, the clever and the playful are
expected, not suspected. And you can skip writing the introductory ten-chapter
beginner鈥檚 guide to everything that English-speaking publishers insist on. Your
audience will have read their Descartes, Nietzsche and Turing, and know where
they disagree with them.
Jean-Michel Truong鈥檚 title, which translates as 鈥渦tterly inhuman鈥�, refers to
what he calls the Successor鈥攁n intelligence housed in silicon, not the
squishy stuff of the human body. The early stages of its development can be seen
in the interlinked computers of the Internet.
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But the idea itself sparked into life in the winter of 1920, when a
21-year-old natural scientist named Friedrich Hayek wrote a paper, 鈥淗ow can
order create itself within our neural fibres?鈥� This foundation of the
鈥渃onnectionist鈥� theory of mind paved the way for the Successor. Hayek later went
on to become a fervent apostle of a barely regulated globalised economy. It is
the communication needs of that economy that persuades humans to devote so much
effort to constructing the Successor.
It鈥檚 not always clear whether Truong is speaking metaphorically or literally
about the Successor. It doesn鈥檛 much matter: this is an entertaining,
stimulating and refreshingly brief read.