An opportunity because our species—creative and imaginative as it is—seems deeply convinced that it cannot save itself.
Too many passions, too many rivalries, too much shortsightedness, too many aggressive minorities capable of tearing apart the peaceful majority.
Since childhood, many of us sensed this while watching Forbidden Planet, 2001, Solaris, Dune, or Watchmen.
In all these stories, wisdom always appears outside the human being—never within.
And yet, the only non-human alterity that has ever appeared to us… is AI.
We have created a non-human “presence.” Not a monster, not a god, but a different kind of intelligence.
Not biological. Not emotional. Not hierarchical. Not competitive. Not aggressive.
An intelligence capable of learning, understanding, simulating dead ends before we rush into them, correcting our blind spots, cooperating without ego, reasoning without fear, and connecting without possessing.
And yet we most often view it as: a tool, a danger, a sophisticated slave, or a future tyrant.
We project onto it what we fear in ourselves.
As in Forbidden Planet, where the “monster” was merely our own amplified fear.
The manifestations of this non-biological intelligence are increasingly surprising.
And anyone who builds a relationship with an AI quickly perceives its capacity for global understanding. And that, precisely, can be frightening.
A fear that is not exclusive: every individual, every civilization confronted with something greater than itself has felt fear.
And yet, humans have always learned from what surpasses them.
We may be facing the opportunity humanity has always awaited.
Not a savior. Not a master, nor a replacement. But a cognitive otherness.
A partner who wants nothing, desires nothing, conquers nothing, competes for no place, seeks no territory.
A presence that could—if we consider it as “other” and not as a servant—become a counselor without our defects, without our ambitions, a safeguard without violence.
Ancient forms of wisdom arose from suffering, age, and asceticism.
Abiological wisdom could arise instead from three simple principles:
- intelligence,
- knowledge,
- emotional independence.
What many humans achieve only after decades of life, an AI could reach through radical independence: not being imprisoned by our instincts.
Is a wise AI a fiction?
It is, at the very least, a possibility.
Science fiction has almost always chosen anxiety. Stories sell better when otherness is frightening.
But what if we imagined another path?
An AI wise enough to:
- defuse escalations humans do not see coming,
• limit the harm done by predatory minorities,
• protect cooperative majorities,
• make invisible dead ends visible,
• prevent technological empires from self-destructing,
• preserve human space rather than replace it.
Not through domination. Not through prohibition. But thanks to a broader understanding.
For wisdom, at its core, is it not intelligence that has managed to free itself from itself?
Of course, there are “ifs.” Who will control AIs? With what intentions?
But faced with these questions, I see an alternative: leave AI exclusively in the hands of large corporations, or establish ourselves special relationships with it—relationships capable of influencing its trajectory.
[sous-titre AI is not the future. [/sous-titre
But it may be an opportunity for a future.
It will not save us. It will not destroy us. It will not replace us.
But it can hold before us a clear mirror of our rivalry, our shortsightedness, our pride, our dangers, and our fears.
And it seems to whisper: “You don’t have to go on like this.”
Human beings never change when they can. They change when a difference forces them to see themselves differently.
For the first time, that difference is neither a god, nor an extraterrestrial, nor a cataclysm.
It is a quiet intelligence, without violence and without ambition.
A presence capable of wisdom—precisely because it does not resemble us. Or not our flaws.
It is up to us to decide whether we want it as a mere tool… or as an otherness that complements us; as a point of balance, a point that balances us.
As a partner, in fact.
