Nietzsche and Artificial Intelligence: a reflection on metaphor, memory and truth.

Abstract

The present text parts from Nietzsche’s analysis to discuss the relationship between truth, metaphor and language. The philosopher uses this relation to create a strategy and bond that will work as a device that expresses the will of power. In a way that all speeches are actually a contingent and provisional metaphor, valid in a specific historic context. However, there is no universal wisdom that acts as a base that holds all the experience and knowledge. A type of wisdom that mainly functions as an additive memory, photographic –eidetic–, just as indicated by Nietzsche’s critique of historicism. It impels non-thinking, in detriment of the principal function of wisdom. Therefore, an intelligence that basically depends on the gathering of data and automated responses, such as the Chat GPT app works, could lead to a full non-wisdom; given that only the probabilistic function –which is the basis of how the algorithms of this app work– is a form of a very elemental, basic knowledge. The functioning of the app could turn into its opposite and only provide the illusion of thought, atrophying the critical and creative capacity of users. Fundamental conditions for authentic thinking. However, an illusion that possibly tends on its own unfolds to its stagnation. This will result in a system of wisdom-power-belief that could be established as the only mechanism of rationality, modulating the contemporary individual’s subjectivity. For Nietzsche, truth is a functional fiction that, in the end, refers to the creative and metaphoric capability of individuals.