Obsolescence begins when we cease to desire

Artificial intelligence is emerging at the heart of every discussion; it embodies the coming threat. A dramatic threshold is anticipated: one day, machines will become more intelligent than us, and humankind will discover that it no longer dominates creation. Our obsolescence will not begin when machines think better than us; they already do. We can create agents that know their function perfectly in three minutes of configuration, whereas it would take a human ten years of study. Obsolescence begins when we ourselves renounce thinking, judging, bearing the human burden, and being responsible.

Servitude creeps in gently: not through violence, but through comfort. The machine doesn't tire. It doesn't doubt. It doesn't get hurt by contact with reality. It responds quickly, decides quickly, reassures quickly. And we, who are slow, hesitant, contradictory, end up mistaking our own limitations for a flaw. Modern man doesn't just hate his limitations: he's ashamed of them.

For a long time, humankind accepted growing within its limitations. It knew, deep down, that it was not its own measure. It received its life and its vocation. Then it sought to free itself from all verticality. By denying God, it did not merely reject a belief; it refused to allow any authority to order, elevate, and judge it. This horizontal mode, which recognized no authority but itself, has now exhausted itself. Thus, artificial intelligence reminds it of itself and imposes a destiny upon it in place of the freedom it abandoned along with its vocation.

Now that he has created an entity more intelligent than himself, what remains for man? He who has denied his intimacy with God (something no artificial intelligence could ever have known)?

This is the crucial point. The danger isn't simply that artificial intelligence might one day produce an acceptable poem, a credible diagnosis, or plausible marriage advice. In a way, it already does. The danger is that we will prioritize its speed and usefulness over real people. A child who babbles, an old person who rambles, a friend who struggles to find the right words, a priest who hesitates before answering: all of this becomes unbearably slow in a world saturated with technology. Let's try not to call progress what is often merely impatience elevated to a system.

Georges Bernanos foresaw this downward spiral long before us: “The danger lies not in the proliferation of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of people accustomed, from childhood, to wanting nothing more than what machines can provide” (France Against the Robots). The statement remains chilling because it speaks less to technology than to desire. What more do we want if statistics provide us with everything we need? What do we desire, if not calculation, synthesis, and comfort?

Scripture, when it speaks of idols, is uncompromising: “He is always better than the things he worships; compared to them, he has life, but they never have” (Wisdom 15:16-17). The whole issue lies there. To worship our tools is not to praise them; it is to begin comparing ourselves to them, and then to despise ourselves. From that point on, human obsolescence is no longer a technical hypothesis. It becomes a spiritual temptation.