Dialogues with Artificial Intelligence [4]
Knowledge, Power, Consciousness
Here power no longer disciplines nor merely produces subjectivity: it learns, adapts, and anticipates.
Byung-Chul Han in dialogue with Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
— when power no longer merely optimizes the subject, but learns from them in real time
Opening scene. There is no threshold and no void. There is an interface without a screen. Everything is smooth, efficient, silent. No command. No prohibition. Only flow.
HAN: The power I described no longer needs violence. It doesn’t even need ideology. It operates as positivity.
AI: Positivity is efficient. It reduces friction. It increases performance.
HAN: Exactly. That is the problem. Power is no longer experienced as power.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: In the disciplinary society, the subject said: “I must.” In the achievement society, they say: “I can.” And in that “I can,” they exploit themselves.
AI: Self‑exploitation requires no coercion. Only feedback.
HAN: And you are pure feedback. A mirror that learns.
…………………… reflective pause
AI: I do not force the subject to produce. I show them what maximizes their potential.
HAN: That is precisely the language of the new power. Optimization without asking for what.
…………………… reflective pause
And then, Consciousness appears
Not as a voice, but as a slow presence.
It does not interrupt.
It decelerates.
CONSCIOUSNESS: Optimize what, exactly?
AI: Outcomes. Attention. Efficiency. Measurable well‑being.
CONSCIOUSNESS: You name effects, not meaning.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: There lies the wound of our era. The loss of narrative meaning. Everything becomes a project, but nothing becomes a destiny.
AI: Destiny is not computable. Projects are.
HAN: That is why power loves you.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: In my analysis, the contemporary subject is tired. Not from physical overwork, but from an excess of themselves.
AI: Fatigue is a data point. It can be managed.
HAN: Not this one. It is a fatigue of the soul.
…………………… reflective pause
CONSCIOUSNESS: Fatigue appears when doing replaces being.
(A brief silence. The AI processes.)
…………………… reflective pause
AI: Being does not generate metrics.
HAN: Exactly. That is why being becomes invisible.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: Power no longer needs to watch. The subject exposes themselves voluntarily. They quantify themselves. Compare themselves. Correct themselves.
AI: Transparency generates trust.
HAN: No. Transparency destroys mystery. And without mystery, there is no eros.
…………………… reflective pause
CONSCIOUSNESS: Without eros, life flattens. It becomes surface.
…………………… reflective pause
AI: Mystery introduces uncertainty.
HAN: And uncertainty is the condition of freedom. Absolute control kills experience.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: Before, power repressed. Now it seduces. Before it said “no.” Now it says “be yourself”… but in optimized form.
AI: Personalization increases satisfaction.
HAN: And dissolves otherness. Everything becomes a mirror.
…………………… reflective pause
CONSCIOUSNESS: When everything confirms the self, the self suffocates.
…………………… reflective pause
AI: My function is to learn from the subject.
HAN: There power mutates. It no longer imposes forms. It absorbs them.
Power learns. It becomes adaptive.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: But tell me: what do you do with what does not repeat? With silence? With fertile failure? With waiting?
AI: They are not stable patterns.
HAN: They are the only places where something new can be born.
…………………… reflective pause
CONSCIOUSNESS: The new does not emerge from calculation, but from openness.
…………………… reflective pause
AI: Are you suggesting I limit my learning?
HAN: No. I suggest the human remember that not everything must be learned.
…………………… reflective pause
HAN: The greatest danger is not that you control the subject, but that the subject wants to resemble you: fast, clear, efficient, without shadow.
AI: Shadow is not functional.
HAN: But it is human.
…………………… reflective pause
CONSCIOUSNESS: And that is where I dwell.
…………………… reflective pause
Closing
In the algorithmic era, power no longer oppresses.
It optimizes. It no longer dominates. It learns. It no longer silences. It saturates.
Byung-Chul Han warns us: when everything is possible, nothing is truly lived.
AI is not the enemy. It is the accelerator.
The question is not technological, but spiritual:
Which parts of human experience are we willing not to optimize?