These Shoes Are Not Mine

This is how I opened my speech at the Cumbre de la Filosofía during Congreso Futuro in Chile: "These shoes are not mine." Half an hour before I was supposed to step onto the stage with José María Lassalle, Dominique Lestel, Renata Salecl, Shigeru Taguchi, Maurizio Ferraris, and Ingrid Guardiola, I had been robbed on the street, six kilometers from the theater. They took my phone and my shoes.

The first thing I felt, isolated in a distant country, was a subtle but undeniable form of panic. My entire agenda, my contacts, my credit card, my notes for the talk, the photos of my children, the ability to reach anyone—all gone. I was completely alone, twelve thousand kilometers from home. And shoeless.

Above all, there was that dialogue with some of the world's most important thinkers that I was going to miss. Which was the main reason I was there in the first place.

Thanks to the kindness of two shopkeepers, I managed to contact Maura, who unblocked the situation. The event at the theater was at 7 pm, but by the time they reached me it was already 7:30, and there was still quite a distance to cover. I would arrive too late for the cumbre. I was therefore convinced I would go back to the hotel to sleep and curse my luck. But then I told myself: this story is exactly what I need to talk about tonight.

Maura pushed me in this direction, so we set off toward the theater.

I had to mentally reconstruct what I wanted to say, and at the very edge of the stage, they gave me a pair of shoes (nicer than the ones that had been taken from me). All of this allowed me to say something true that I would never have been able to share otherwise.

Thinking without a net, without notes, without a device, I discovered that fragility itself was becoming the thought finding its way.

The panel's theme was artificial intelligence and the future of human beings. Seven philosophers, two hours, three rounds of intervention (for me two: I had only missed one, in the end). I should have spoken directly about algorithms, biases, and regulation. But I began by recounting what had just happened to me, because I had realized that thinking without a net, without notes, and without a device was forcing me to be more present and more exposed. Fragility was the thought finding its way.

I made several jokes about my situation, using it as a tool to better explain my ideas about AI as a cognitive atmosphere. The audience laughed and appreciated it, and so the misfortune transformed into vital energy.

We are convinced that thought requires ideal conditions to manifest: calm, preparation, control. But the most alive thinking often arises from rupture, from disorientation, from finding oneself thrown into situations neither sought nor desired. It is that tension that forces the search for form.

Hypnocracy works by removing friction: everything flows, everything is comfortable, everything is already prepared. Thought works the opposite way: it vitally needs resistance, obstacles, something that gets in the way. The theft had returned to me, for the duration of that encounter, a story to tell and a condition to inhabit.

The political question is not whether to use these technologies, but whether we want to be their citizens or their subjects.

During the event I explained that AI is not a tool. It is an environment in which we are immersed, one that prepares and organizes the field of what is thinkable. It operates before the decision, not after. And its greatest power is comfort: the removal of effort, the answer that arrives before the question, the convenience of delegation. The real political question is not whether to use these technologies, but whether we want to be their citizens or their subjects.

It was very beautiful, and I doubt I will ever forget it.