I recently read “Die Vierte Kränkung” (“The Fourth Insult”) by Rüdiger Safranski. This book was recommended to me in Germany where it had made its way to the bestseller list.

The title of the book refers to Freud’s identification of the three prior "narcissistic insults” to humans: losing our place at the center of the universe (Copernicus), arising from evolution rather than creation (Darwin), and being driven by the unconscious (conveniently Freud himself). The fourth insult then is discovering that we humans are not the only ones capable of intelligence.

Except for the last chapter, the book’s posturing is unintentionally deeply ironic given its title. It is a no holds barred defense of human intelligence as being undoubtedly superior to its artificial counterpart. To make his point, Safranski appeals variously to our soul, our consciousness, our spirit, our morality. He flat out rejects the idea that machines could ever have any of these characteristics based on the simple assertion that they are “not alive” without providing any arguments to back up this assertion (it is apparently meant to be obvious or left as an exercise for the reader).

The great irony is that this is effectively the same line of argument that was advanced against Darwin’s The Origin of Species by writers such as St. George Jackson Mivart in his The Genesis of Species or Alfred Russel Wallace, who after co-discovering evolution broke with Darwin exactly over the issue that the human mind could not possibly have arisen from evolution alone. Safranski writes as if he is blissfully unaware of repeating this exact pattern of objection, picking certain features of the mind and simply asserting that these cannot arise in artificial intelligence. Or maybe he is aware of it and is simply counting on the reader not to realize this?

Let’s be clear: assuming the conclusion is not science or philosophy. It is religion. So if you want to read a religious text, by all means read the book. Despite his early appeal to humanism in some of the middle sections Safranski comes close to admitting that his is basically an appeal to a divine soul. Now an incredibly charitable reading of the book is that Safranski is simply making an argument about the current generation of artificial intelligence. He does at times gesture at the possibility that future aftifical intelligences might have consciousness but never seriously engages with the argument (e.g. what would be the difference with present generations of artificial intelligence).

I should also point out that the book does have one compelling section in the last couple of subchapters. Here Safranski makes concrete how “instrumental intelligence” (artificial) could be at odds with “reflective intelligence” (human). He also links this conflict to the ways in which capitalism itself is only partially aligned with human thriving. This follows a needless two sentence sideswipe at people concerned about existential risk, which he dismisses on the grounds that it could only arise from artificial intelligence with consciousness (completely reversing the common x-risk argument and of course in contradiction to his own writing that immediately follows).

Throughout the book Safranski seems completely unaware of any of the recent artificial intelligence research and even his philosophical references exclude relevant modern work. To give just one example, he favorably cites Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment from 1980, ignoring all the criticism of this argument that has piled up in the four and a half decades since.

There is a final irony here. By characterizing artificial intelligence as the fourth insult, Safranski vastly underplays its impact. The first three were all examples of progress in human understanding that resulted in elevating the human position (even if religious types experienced it as a demotion). Through an improved understanding of physics, biology, and psychology, humans have been able to expand our sphere of influence. Now, however, we are facing the real risk of dramatically diminishing it.