Sublime

When Italian philosopher and essayist Andrea Colamedici released Ipnocrazia: Trump, Musk e La Nuova Architettura Della Realtà (Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the New Architecture of Reality), he wanted to make a statement about the existence of truth in the digital age. The book, published in December, was described as “a crucial book for understanding how control is currently exercised not by repressing truth but by multiplying narratives, making it impossible to locate any fixed point,” according to a description by Tlon, a publishing house Colamedici cofounded. While the book attracted buzz in philosophy circles, Italian magazine L’Espresso revealed in April that the book’s purported author, Jianwei Xun, did not exist, after one of its editors tried and failed to interview him. Initially described as a Hong Kong-born philosopher based in Berlin, it turned out that Xun was actually a hybrid human-algorithmic creation. Colamedici, listed on the book as translator, used AI to generate concepts and then critique those concepts. “It’s not just a book, but a philosophical experiment, a performance. My aim was to raise awareness,” he tells WIRED. He says the point of the book was to help readers understand AI and invent a new concept for this era. However, the controversy surrounding the decision to use AI to author it, and initially withhold that information, has now become a major part of the discourse around it—and that’s what Colamedici wanted. “When readers discovered the truth about how the book was created, many were hurt. I deeply regret that, but it was necessary,” he says. Tap the 🔗 in bio to read the full story.