Alkis Gounaris
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Abstract: According to Sartre, people experience a constant state of existential anxiety, because being "condemned" to freely define our own purpose, at every moment of our lives we must make choices that ultimately determine who we are. In this light, Theofanis Tasis, in his new book entitled "Digital Humanism - Virtual Subject and Artificial Intelligence", points out that while man in the first industrial revolution "assigned" physical labor to machines in order to save time and energy, nowadays he "cedes" part of his mental abilities to algorithms, in order to relieve the burden of the innumerable choices offered by the information overload of the digital world. The overexposure of the modern, always online human to a vast range of choices that is impossible to evaluate and manage, leads to a state of existential anxiety from which the algorithms of Facebook or Google "generously" free us, while claiming the characteristic that makes us who we are. Proposing Aristotelian “phronesis” as a measure of the evolution of machines in the future, the author sets a framework for discussion that many would agree on, as to its necessity and objectives, while objections could be made to the way issues related to the creation of an "ethical artificial intelligence" are approached, or regarding the author's assumptions about the "nature" of the algorithms and the metaphysical foundation of human intelligence.

Keywords: digital humanism, artificial intelligence, machine ethics

Gounaris, Α. (2020). The Algorithm of the Digital Humanism. Original publication in www.bookpress.gr. Retrieved [02/26/2020] from https://alkisgounaris.gr/en/archives/the-algorithm-of-the-digital-humanism/