Nietzsche's Advice for the AI Age

What if good and evil are illusions?

Power shapes our truths.

We can no longer organize around one good.

Too much money and the internet shattered the monoculture.

As designers in transition, focus on what works.

We must design games, not be mindlessly subjected to them. Especially moral ones.

Coherence depends on technology.

The Wright brothers invented a plane.

Not a plane for good.

Planes carry both humans and warheads.

We need good technology, not tech for good.

Moralizing itself is a form of biopower. It controls and aligns people.

We need to understand social-psychological apparatuses.

This is ontological engineering.

Because let’s be real. The digital age teaches a lesson.

That in the pursuit of power, everything is permitted. Even pretending to want good.

That our moralities may be manipulated against our best interests.

Players weaponize good and evil. This is a pragmatic reality.

Yet this is also practical for effective design. Mapping the moral landscape.

Understanding the deeper context of why things are done.

The values. The legitimacy. The adversarial relations.

What is desired? Who defines that? What is hated? How is that defined?

Now, the game is design or be designed.

The game of subjectivity in a digitised world.

The game of social relations in a capitalist world.

The game of products and services in an informational world.

Where does that leave the “human”?

At the click farm? Addicted to fast-paced content? Unable to critically react to a headline?

The human goes wherever we choose to go.

This is not philosophical relativism. This is philosophical re-constructionism.

Ontologically reconstructing what it means to be human.

The subject is the project.

But you must attune to the proper frequency of power.

Contemplate the morally abhorrent.

Like a surgeon overcomes disgust. So must we learn to overcome certain values.

More action, radical creation.

This would be Nietzsche’s lesson for creators in the AI era.

Creators of values.