Our Minds Under Siege: How to Avoid Being Manipulated in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Author, curator and podcaster Bruno Giussani was the European director and global curator of the TED conferences for two decades (2005–24). In Our Minds Under Siege, the specialist of digital culture writes about the “technologies of influence” and their social and political implications. In a world saturated with information, social media, artificial intelligence and strategies of cognitive influence, our capacity for thinking clearly and understanding reality is itself under threat. It is no longer only about disinformation and fake news: these technologies capture our attention, appropriate our data, analyse and exploit our emotions and challenge our autonomy of thought. Giussani decrypts how AI and other algorithmic technologies work and what their impacts are. He explains the nature of the relationship that is developing between us and these machines and the economic and power structures in which they exist. And he offers guidance to resisting against this technological takeover and for us to become competent users of AI without being used by it.