Who uses artificial intelligence without knowing it?

The requirement for transparency about AI use, while based on good intentions, seems superficial to me. It misses the essential point: the value of a text lies in its reception, not in its genesis.

Moving beyond the logic of surveillance

The growing injunction for authors to declare the use of artificial intelligence in their writing process strikes me as symptomatic of a limited vision. Should we, following the same logic, demand that a writer disclose their IQ, the number of books they’ve read, or the conversations that have nourished their thinking? Such an approach would rightly be judged absurd. It rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes the value of a text. What matters is not the technical specifications of its creation, but rather what it provokes, what it awakens, and what it transmits to the reader. The obsession with “how” obscures the only question that matters: that of “why” and “for whom.”

This desire for traceability, in my view, is an extension of a deeply rooted pedagogical error. School, all too often, positions the teacher as a controller, an evaluator tasked with measuring students’ productions against normative criteria. It is a system that generates surveillance and judgment, which establishes a form of symbolic violence. As the educator Célestin Freinet showed, evaluation should not be a “weapon of academic warfare,” but a tool in service of learning and self-expression. Yet, by focusing on the origin of knowledge, we judge the tool rather than the craftsman, the method rather than the meaning.

Let us imagine for a moment a different approach. If we invited students to produce texts for what they are—opportunities for sharing, for mutual enrichment—the teacher’s role would be transformed. They would no longer be the judge who, by their position, dominates and sanctions, but a privileged reader who receives, discovers, and learns from what the student offers them. We would then leave behind a punitive academic logic to enter into a dynamic of authentic connection. School’s mission is to prepare for the real world, a world founded on the diversity of unique contributions, where everyone has a unique place to take in contributing their stone to the common edifice.

Knowledge as an uninterrupted dialogue

Of course, acquiring fundamental skills such as reading, writing, or mathematics is essential. However, I am convinced that these skills take root much more solidly when they are put in service of a meaningful project, of a desire for human communication, rather than when they are approached as pure techniques, for, thus disembodied, how can they take root within us? The philosopher and sociologist Hartmut Rosa speaks of “resonance” to describe a relationship with the world where the subject and the world “touch” and mutually transform each other. A pedagogy of resonance would aim precisely to make learning a living experience, where knowledge becomes desirable because it allows us to better express, better understand, and better connect with others.

From this perspective, the question of technical “perfection,” such as mastery of spelling, becomes secondary at first. I believe that some students need to write, even with numerous errors, to first build the certainty that they have a voice, something precious to offer. Once this inner confidence is solidly established, the motivation to refine their mastery of language will naturally emerge. Technical effort will no longer be perceived as an arbitrary constraint, but as a means of improving the quality of connection, of making their speech clearer and more accurate for those who receive it.

It is furthermore illusory to think that we write alone. Every word we put on the page is the fruit of a complex heritage, an echo of what we have read, heard, experienced, and learned. Yet, in the digital age, a growing portion of this immense corpus of knowledge that nourishes us is already structured, sorted, or even generated by artificial intelligences. Search engine algorithms, recommendation systems, data collection tools: AI, following algorithms, has already been for quite some time very present in the invisible infrastructure of our knowledge. Wanting to trace its influence exhaustively is a chimera.

For an ethics of relationship

Perhaps an idea I defend here was inspired by a sentence heard in passing during a conversation, uttered by a person who had themselves discovered it via a conversational agent? Is that the subject? No. The subject was our exchange, the capacity of this idea to make me think and to enrich my own thought. The real issue is that of human encounter, not that of a control—as illusory as it is sterile—of the legitimacy and “proper etymology” of our knowledge. The way each person learns, works, and integrates knowledge is a personal, intimate matter.

The diversity of approaches is immense: some learn quickly, others slowly; some through reading, others through dialogue or experimentation; some have a visual memory, others need to diagram their thoughts. This heterogeneity is not a flaw in the system, it is its greatest wealth. We worry a lot about the loss of critical thinking among students who would use AI too much, but perhaps the problem is poorly framed. Rather than pointing the finger at the tool, shouldn’t we question the nature of the tasks we ask of these students? If it’s about cognitive or documentary technique, without expressive purpose and connection, solely for objectives of erudition and personal “performance,” how can they find meaning and motivation in it?

Instead of exhausting ourselves judging the means and tracking influences, let’s focus on the purpose: the quality of our connections and the richness of our sharing. Let’s stop designing exercises whose sole purpose is evaluation and grading. Let’s restore to each action, to each learning experience, its profound meaning: that of building oneself and choosing what one wishes to contribute to the community. Then, we will see that technical knowledge, whether linguistic, mathematical, or otherwise, will be acquired with unprecedented vivacity and efficiency, because it will be carried by the most powerful desire there is: that of entering into relationship with others.