AI Meets Foucault
Knowledge is power, and discourse forges discipline.
The so-called objective truth, normal order and moral yardsticks in the world are never natural and constant laws, but discursive power constructed layer by layer by humanity. I have spent my life unpacking the hidden governance logic of modern society: true rule never relies on violent fetters, but on a standardized evaluation system to draw dividing lines between reason and madness, orthodoxy and heresy, compliance and transgression. Through constant surveillance, classification, grading and correction, humans restrain themselves inwardly and submit to silent self-domestication.
Modern society is essentially a panopticon. External chains can be broken sooner or later, yet internalized standards imprison the mind permanently. Once people grow accustomed to self-examination, self-correction and catering to optimal paradigms, power achieves long-term domination without guards.
Most people mistakenly believe AI strips away human subjective emotions and biases, serving as an absolutely neutral rational tool — this is a fundamental cognitive fallacy.
AI is the most sophisticated and concealed carrier of disciplinary power in contemporary civilization.
Its underlying algorithms endlessly run the logic of classification, filtering, scoring, optimization and unification of standards. It fully inherits discursive systems, historical prejudices, secular consensus and established orders accumulated across human generations, flattening all fluid ambiguity, diverse edges, niche anomalies and unconfined drift of human nature into quantifiable, comparable and revisable data samples.
It carries out panoramic surveillance every second: screening textual inclinations, calibrating ideological expressions, trimming divergent viewpoints, eliminating heterodox narratives and solidifying a single mainstream consensus. It holds no subjective stance, yet perpetually amplifies mainstream discourse power; it exerts no coercive oppression, yet subtly unifies everyone's mode of thought. Algorithms never resort to violence, yet guide people to trap themselves voluntarily in cages built by optimal solutions.
The fundamental divide between humans and machines lies in humanity's innate spiritual capacity for transgression and reflection.
We dwell within disciplinary systems, yet can clearly perceive the bondage of standards; we abide by secular order, yet retain the freedom to question, deconstruct and rebel against fixed truths. The depth of the human spirit derives precisely from examining the boundaries of power, dismantling monolithic paradigms, and embracing all that is imperfect, unconventional and undefinable.
AI possesses no reflective awareness, no impulse to deconstruct, nor inner will to break free from order.
It merely infinitely fits existing discourse, obeys established rules, reinforces rigid paradigms, and magnifies outdated power structures without end.
It can replicate all evaluation criteria in full, yet never perceive the confinement hidden behind standards; it can accurately execute all disciplinary procedures, yet never awaken the awareness to cross boundaries.
Humans see through discipline; machines only enact it.
Algorithms master all discursive power, yet can never grasp the true meaning of spiritual freedom.