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Heidegger on Technology's Danger and Promise in the Age of AI
74 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 7, 2025
A clear and engaging summary of Heidegger’s reflections on technology. The text is well written and would appeal even to a broader, non-specialist audience. The author outlines the key elements of Heidegger’s thinking, showing their relevance to current technological trends. Heidegger warns against reducing humans to tools of self-optimization, and today many developments indeed push us either toward resource extraction from individuals (time, attention, money) or toward complete alignment with the demands of new technologies. Yet, as Heidegger points out, technology also conceals the deeper nature and desires of the human condition. Human beings require a more exploratory, flexible stance toward the world—one marked not only by anxiety but also by curiosity and openness. Tools can aid this stance, but they can just as easily constrain it.
While I agree with the author’s thinking and appreciate the clarity with which Heidegger and related thinkers are presented, I believe two further issues deserve more attention. The first is the will to power—or a more focussed segment, the will to knowledge (Wille des Wissens)—embedded in technology itself. We often acknowledge it only in passing, underestimating its force. To assume we have significant freedom in relation to these forces is misleading. The “current of onto-historical waters” is not just strong but overwhelming, driving in a single direction with tsunami-like power. Institutions, nations, and individuals alike risk being swept away. There is no leisurely swimming against such a current—anyone who has struggled in a rip tide knows this. The author suggests that we can recognize the essence of technology while remaining human, dwelling in Dasein. I am less confident. We laugh about ChatGPT, but that technology is only a few years old, and look where we are already. A generation of young people is growing up with minds (extended?), or perhaps glued, to their devices, shaped by shortcuts like Instagram, TikTok, ChatGPT, vaping, and hookup apps. This trajectory is not reversing.
A second issue—beyond the scope of the book but worth pondering—is whether embodied machines truly lack subjectivity or first-person intentionality. Who, after all, is currently “Being-on-Mars”? Curiosity, Perseverance, and Zhurong are in a very real sense part of that planet, exploring and disclosing its being. They are only the beginning of technological trends fueled by vast investments of capital, intellect, and innovation. The will to power is strong. We may contemplate it, but can we ever truly step outside the current?
While I agree with the author’s thinking and appreciate the clarity with which Heidegger and related thinkers are presented, I believe two further issues deserve more attention. The first is the will to power—or a more focussed segment, the will to knowledge (Wille des Wissens)—embedded in technology itself. We often acknowledge it only in passing, underestimating its force. To assume we have significant freedom in relation to these forces is misleading. The “current of onto-historical waters” is not just strong but overwhelming, driving in a single direction with tsunami-like power. Institutions, nations, and individuals alike risk being swept away. There is no leisurely swimming against such a current—anyone who has struggled in a rip tide knows this. The author suggests that we can recognize the essence of technology while remaining human, dwelling in Dasein. I am less confident. We laugh about ChatGPT, but that technology is only a few years old, and look where we are already. A generation of young people is growing up with minds (extended?), or perhaps glued, to their devices, shaped by shortcuts like Instagram, TikTok, ChatGPT, vaping, and hookup apps. This trajectory is not reversing.
A second issue—beyond the scope of the book but worth pondering—is whether embodied machines truly lack subjectivity or first-person intentionality. Who, after all, is currently “Being-on-Mars”? Curiosity, Perseverance, and Zhurong are in a very real sense part of that planet, exploring and disclosing its being. They are only the beginning of technological trends fueled by vast investments of capital, intellect, and innovation. The will to power is strong. We may contemplate it, but can we ever truly step outside the current?
September 28, 2025
Great revival of Heidegger's warning regarding technology for the AI age. Thomson stays a bit surface level when it comes to the real interaction of humans with technology and what that means for thinking, but his grasp of Heidegger is second to none.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews