Jean-Paul Sartre
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Jean-Paul Sartre's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The alibi I reach for most often is the one about the market.
"The market requires this." "The competitive landscape demands that." "We have no choice but to move faster." I have said these sentences in boardrooms and on calls and in the quiet negotiations I conduct with myself at two in the morning when the screen is the only light and the question of whether to keep going or stop has already been answered by the fact that I am still going.
Every one of those sentences contains truth. The market is real. Competition is real. The pressure to ship is not imaginary. But Jean-Paul Sartre spent his career making a single, devastating observation about sentences like these: they function as alibis. They take a
