Andrea Colamedici invented a philosopher, presented him as an author and produced a book, secretly generated with the help of artificial intelligence, about manipulating reality in the digital age.
People were deceived. Accusations of dishonesty, bad ethics and even illegality flew.
But the man behind it, Mr. Colamedici, insists it was not a hoax; rather, he described it as a “philosophical experiment,” saying that it helps to showhow A.I. will “slowly but inevitably destroy our capacity to think.”
Mr. Colamedici is an Italian publisher who — along with two A.I. tools — generated “Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the Architecture of Reality,” a buzzy text ostensibly written by Jianwei Xun, the nonexistent philosopher.
In December, Mr. Colamedici’s press printed 70 copies of an Italian edition that he supposedly translated. Still, the book quickly gained outsize attention, being covered by media outlets in Germany, Spain, Italy and France, and being cited by tech luminaries.
“Hypnocracy” describes how powerful people use technology to shape perception with “hypnotic narratives,” putting the public in a kind of collective trance that may be exacerbated by relying on A.I.
The book’s publication came as schools, businesses, governments and internet users all over the world are wrestling with how to use — and not use — A.I. tools, which tech giants and startups have made widely available. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI, the creator of Chat GPT, and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
