Modern travel is increasingly understood as an optimization problem. Algorithms calculate the fastest route, platforms filter hotels by preference, artificial intelligence generates personalized itineraries. Future quantum computers could accelerate this development once again, radically: enormous numbers of possibilities could be calculated simultaneously, traffic flows optimized, and travel individualized down to the smallest detail. The underlying idea is: the more we know and can calculate, the closer we come to the perfect trip.

But it is precisely at this point that the philosophical question begins.

Is the best trip really the one in which as little as possible is left to chance? Or does the meaning of travel lie precisely in the fact that something can happen which was not previously determined?

Here the quantum world opens up an interesting perspective. This is not about uncritically transferring concepts from quantum physics onto human experience. People do not possess a measurable “travel frequency,” and places cannot be physically determined to “resonate” with a personality. What is more interesting is the worldview that can philosophically be derived from quantum physics: reality no longer appears solely as a collection of clearly determined things, but also as a field of possibilities, relationships, and interactions.

It is precisely here that the 9 Gates Travel Philosophy can be read anew.

A journey would then not simply be the movement of a finished subject through an already fully determined world. It would be a space of possibility, in which traveler, place, and other people meet and thereby bring forth something that was not previously fully determined.

Before every journey, many possible journeys exist simultaneously.

I can visit a city and return bored. I can meet a person there who changes my thinking. I can see a landscape that at first seems meaningless and years later becomes a defining memory. I can leave a route along the way, change my intention, or discover a question I did not even know was occupying me before I set off.

The journey therefore does not begin with certainty, but with possibility.

The Inner Dimension: The Traveler Is Not Yet Finished

The first three gates – Metamorphosis, Transformation, and Intuition – describe the inner dimension of travel.

Metamorphosis means, first of all, that a person need not understand themselves as complete. Whoever sets out carries various possibilities of their future self within them. Perhaps they will return braver, calmer, more attentive, or more reflective. Perhaps their relationship to a person, a culture, or to themselves will change.

In this sense, travel carries something of a state of openness: it is not yet decided which possibility will become reality.

Transformation refers to the moment in which such a possibility actually takes shape. A conversation, a landscape, a conflict, or an unexpected experience can trigger a shift. What was previously only conceivable becomes part of one’s own biography.

Intuition, finally, reminds us that this process cannot be fully planned. Modern technology easily conveys the impression that enough data could solve any problem. But even a perfect information base could not anticipate what meaning a concrete experience will hold for a person. Meaning does not arise from data alone. It arises in the experience itself, and in the ability to grasp everything essential “intuitively.”

The first three gates therefore pose a decisive question:

Who might I become through this journey?

The Outer Dimension: Places Exist in Constellations

With the gates Constellation, Transaction, and Resonance, the perspective shifts from the traveler to their relationship with the world.

A destination is never merely a geographic point.

Sarajevo is not simply a collection of sights. Palermo is not merely architecture, cuisine, and climate. Mecca cannot be reduced to coordinates and infrastructure. Every place stands within historical, cultural, political, economic, and spiritual contexts.

The gate of Constellation describes exactly this idea. The traveler enters an already existing web of relationships. At the same time, their presence changes this web to some degree. Traveling therefore means not merely perceiving, but participating. This is also what makes the gate of Transaction philosophically interesting. Transaction does not merely mean the exchange of money for services. It denotes a fundamental interaction between traveler and world.

Whoever travels leaves traces. They pay, consume, photograph, tell stories, interpret, respect, or disregard rules. They influence the people and places they encounter.

Travel is therefore never entirely neutral.

The fifth gate poses the question:

How do I encounter the world I move through?

This is followed by the gate of Resonance. Here the relationship between inner and outer becomes especially clear. Resonance does not mean that a place objectively possesses a particular effect. Rather, a place begins to become meaningful for a particular person in a particular situation.

Something speaks to us.

And we respond.

Precisely for this reason, resonance cannot be fully manufactured. Inner, outer, and social parameters always work together here and cannot philosophically be reduced to the idea of measurable frequencies. Resonance is not a technical value. It is an event between human being and world.

It is precisely at this point that a possible future of travel begins to take shape. If constellation, transaction, and resonance describe not only what already happens between traveler and place, but also what can be sought, the task of the outer gates changes. One would then no longer search for the statistically optimal destination, but for a place where a fitting constellation is currently forming: a convergence of timing, cultural context, social environment, and personal state that cannot be repeated in this exact form. The outer gates would thus shift from a purely descriptive framework to a compass for future travel: the goal would no longer be the perfect route, but the discovery of such rare constellations.

The Social Dimension: Travel Happens Between People

The gates Alone, Pairs, and Groups finally open up the social dimension.

Traveling alone does not simply mean being on the road without company. It changes the structure of perception. Whoever travels alone loses part of the familiar social mirroring. No one continually confirms the accustomed role. This gives rise to a particular form of self-observation:

Who am I, when the people who normally define me are not present?

This structure changes when traveling as a pair. A shared journey never belongs entirely to just one of the two travelers. Perceptions influence each other. Memories are formed together. Sometimes a place becomes meaningful precisely because it was experienced with a particular person.

In groups, this effect becomes even stronger.

Pilgrimages, expeditions, educational trips, or trips among friends generate shared stories. A group develops rituals, memories, conflicts, and narratives that no individual could have brought forth alone. Here, something new emerges out of relationships. The journey becomes a fellowship of the road.

From the Perfect Trip to the Open Event

This reveals a fundamental difference between a purely technological vision of the future and a philosophy of travel. The technological vision asks:

How can we calculate the optimal trip out of billions of possibilities?

This very idea could be pushed to a radical extreme: a future quantum AI could process enormous numbers of scenarios simultaneously and generate an individually optimized travel itinerary from them. The philosophical answer of the 9 gates, however, would be:

Perhaps the task is not to find the one perfect trip at all.

Because when every encounter is predetermined, every surprise calculated, and every detour avoided, the meaning of travel itself changes. This paradox is obvious: a fully optimized trip could threaten serendipity and spontaneity, and reduce the traveler to an extra in a perfectly curated sequence of events. Precisely for this reason, technology should not eliminate all possibility. Rather, it could help open up good spaces of possibility.

The Possibility Engine

Here, perhaps, lies a future application of the 9 Gates philosophy.

The first generation of digital travel platforms was a Search Engine:

What is there?

The next generation became a Recommendation Engine:

What might I like?

A philosophically more sophisticated AI could become a Possibility Engine:

What could emerge on this journey?

That would be a fundamental shift. Such an AI would not claim to be able to calculate the ideal experience. It would make different possibilities visible. It could ask:

What kind of inner change is the traveler seeking?

What historical and cultural constellations shape a place?

What encounters could open up new perspectives?

What form of resonance is possible?

Should the journey take place alone, as a pair, or within a community?

The 9 gates would thus become the interpretive architecture of such an AI.

Technology does not decide what the traveler should experience.

It opens doors.

When Possibility Becomes Meaning

Perhaps this is precisely where the deepest connection between the quantum world and a philosophy of travel lies. Before the journey, a field of possibilities exists. During the journey, encounters and decisions arise. Some possibilities vanish, others become reality. It is not a computer that determines which possibility becomes reality. The traveler themselves takes part. They decide, react, doubt, encounter, linger, and change direction. This is how meaning arises.

The formula of such a travel philosophy could therefore read:

Possibility × Encounter × Attention = Meaning

Or, in the language of the nine gates:

Inner space of possibility × outer constellation × social relationship = travel event

The meaning of travel is then located neither solely in the person nor solely in the destination. It arises in the in-between. The 9 gates therefore do not tell us where to travel. They try to understand how meaning arises out of possibility.

Der Beitrag Traveling in the Space of Possibility erschien zuerst auf Inspiration Travel Guide.

In this thinking Hui stands in a clear, though not uncritical, proximity to Martin Heidegger. Heidegger, too, saw modern technology not as a mere collection of devices but as a mode of revealing that forces being into a particular horizon. His notion of Gestell describes the modern world not as an assemblage of useful means but as an all-encompassing ordering principle in which things appear only as resources. Hui adopts this fundamental intuition but frees it from Heidegger’s often fateful sense of inevitability. Whereas Heidegger treats the modern technological world as a nearly unavoidable, globally dominant way of being, Hui opens a space for plurality: there could be many technologies rooted in different cosmologies; many ways of understanding the world, and hence many possible technological futures. Art becomes the key instance in this framework – for both thinkers – yet in Hui it takes on a distinctly world-pluralistic function: it reveals unactualized possibilities, alternative modes of perception and relation, that can inspire and transform the technological. From this perspective it becomes clear that travel, too, is never merely a movement across space but a meeting of cosmotechnics – a friction between ways of being in the world that, at best, enrich one another.

It is within this context that the Nine Doors of Travel open up: a philosophy that leads travel out of its touristic impoverishment and back into an aesthetic and existential practice. The structure of the Nine Doors can be understood through three spheres, each illuminating a particular dimension of the journey. The inner sphere encompasses metamorphosis, transformation, and intuition – three processes that do not simply take the traveler to new places but set in motion what within them has remained dormant or unformed. The outer sphere describes constellation, transaction, and resonance space, making visible that every journey is a mesh of situations, exchanges, and atmospheric fields in which meaning emerges. And the social sphere distinguishes between traveling alone, as a couple, or as a group, not as logistical categories but as different modes of self-perception, attention, and relation to the world. Taken together, these three spheres form the architecture of the Nine Doors – an open system describing how travel becomes a movement of internal and external becoming.

Each door embodies an attitude toward being on the move: a way of seeing, of inscribing oneself into the world, of allowing oneself to be shaken or expanded by it. Because they are movements rather than rules, the Nine Doors offer a counter-image to the algorithmic flattening that increasingly shapes our experience. They remind us that travel begins not with predictability but with the tactile encounter with the unknown.
In this sense, art becomes indispensable – both in Hui’s thinking and in the philosophy of the Doors. Art is what makes the world appear differently. It is what resists the grasp of function, what does not need to explain itself in order to have an effect. Perhaps it is even the only space in which intuition and sensitivity can live undisturbed. And it is precisely here, in this aesthetic dimension, that the Nine Doors meet Hui’s cosmotechnics: both emphasize the necessity of a form of perception that does not conform to the grid of usefulness. Art becomes a school of travel, because it teaches us to look again without immediately seeking to understand.

Yet under today’s digital platforms this way of seeing is increasingly endangered. Algorithms designed to protect us from overwhelm begin to smooth the world. They filter, sort, and prioritize; they make decisions easier, yet quietly remove that uncertainty which makes travel transformative. Intuition yields to recommendation; freedom to optimization; sensitivity to data points. The world loses depth when it consists only of what a system presents to us. And yet within this situation lies the possibility of a new, conscious design of artificial intelligence. An AI shaped by the spirit of the Nine Doors would not lead, but accompany. It would cultivate an awareness for those interstitial spaces where the expected and the surprising meet. It would pose questions instead of dictating answers, helping the traveler sharpen their own perception. Such an AI would not be a navigator that knows the shortest route, but an aesthetic compass that widens the field of possibility. It might suggest the unforeseen without imposing it; it might offer cues that do not predict how we will act but encourage us to see differently.

In such a future, the Door of Sensitivity would be more than a moral gesture. It would imply a technology attuned to atmospheric qualities – those quiet signs that cannot be measured yet transform a journey. AI would provide not only facts about places but also moods, stories, and fragile connections. It would restore the unspectacular as a legitimate mode of experience and free travelers from the confines of rating systems. At best, it would cultivate a relationship between traveler and place supported not by consumption but by attention.
Freedom, too, would take on a new timbre. It would no longer be the illusion of endless choice, but the capacity to face the uncertain without fear. An AI that protects freedom would need to incorporate precisely what cannot be calculated – chance, incompleteness, silence. It would need to question itself rather than present itself as an all-knowing authority. Perhaps the greatest freedom AI could ever offer is the insight that we do not have to follow it. That it offers options, not paths. That it sees us without defining us.

Responsibility ultimately stands at the heart of travel. Every movement through the world has consequences – for landscapes, for communities, for fragile cultural fabrics. An AI that takes responsibility seriously would not obscure these relationships but illuminate them. It would amplify local perspectives and invite travelers into networks of mutual care. This, too, would constitute a cosmotechnics in Hui’s sense: a technology that does not destroy but binds; that does not dominate but mediates. Within this vision, one can glimpse the outline of a new kind of digital travel platform. A platform that does not cling to destinations, but to world-relations. The Nine Doors would not appear as categories, but as passages – ways of approaching the world with different eyes. Such a platform would be less a map than a compass; less an algorithm than an invitation. It would trust that people can find their own paths – and that technology does not have to stand in their way.

Travel, in this understanding, is no act of consumption but a form of art. It is the art of losing and finding oneself; the art of experiencing the world as something unfinished, something that does not wait for us yet nonetheless receives us. If AI one day accompanies this form of travel without diminishing it, then only because we have learned to treat AI itself as an aesthetic practice – as a space in which perception can grow.
In such a future the world is not smoother but richer. Not more univocal but more diverse. Not more predictable but more human. And the doors we pass through on our journeys will not be made of stone, steel, or software, but will open within us when we are willing to see differently

Der Beitrag Cosmo technics, Art, and Travel erschien zuerst auf Inspiration Travel Guide.

This openness was never merely a historical episode. Over the centuries, Morocco and its cities have attracted writers, artists, and philosophers from around the world who immortalized the country in literature and art. Paul Bowles settled in Tangier in 1947 and, through novels such as The Sheltering Sky and his ethnomusicological recordings, introduced Morocco to Western audiences. Pierre Loti captured his impressions in Au Maroc in 1890. Elias Canetti created a masterpiece of literary travel observation with The Voices of Marrakesh. Visual artists such as Eugène Delacroix and Henri Matisse were equally inspired by Morocco’s colors and light. More recently, Austrian multi-artist André Heller created the ANIMA Garden near Marrakesh, an extraordinary project weaving together nature and contemporary sculpture. This diversity of voices and styles demonstrates that Morocco has long been a cultural crossroads—a country that preserves tradition while welcoming creative impulses from abroad.

For travelers, Morocco offers a unique opportunity for a profound, holistic experience. Engaging with the nation’s history, immersing oneself in its diverse natural landscapes, and exploring its vibrant arts scene merge into a single, unified world of the mind and spirit. Here, intellectual discovery and sensory exploration blend seamlessly, allowing visitors to encounter the country in a way that nourishes both curiosity and contemplation.

Today, Morocco again stands at a turning point in its tourism development. After a record year in 2024 with around 17.4 million visitors—a 20 percent increase over the previous year—the country recorded 8.9 million international arrivals in the first half of 2025. The goal is to welcome around 26 million guests by 2030. Yet Morocco is not focused on growth alone. The national Tourism Roadmap 2023–2026 lays out a clear strategy for sustainable, high-quality tourism. Plans include expanding air transport connections, investing in tourism infrastructure, implementing targeted digital strategies, and adopting a holistic “experience” orientation modeled on successful examples such as Portugal, Turkey, and Greece. Nine thematic sectors—from culture and trekking to beaches, deserts, and oases—along with five cross-sector areas such as gastronomy, festivals, handicrafts, sustainable development, and alternative accommodations aim to set new standards.

This strategy seeks to avoid mass tourism and place guests at the center of an authentic experience. Sustainability is paramount: from improving hotel quality to promoting regional products and strengthening traditional crafts. The establishment of a national tourism committee led by the Prime Minister ensures a modern governance structure that takes regional particularities into account and establishes ecological standards.
At the same time, Morocco offers investors a dynamic environment that supports the transition to a digital future. A young, tech-savvy population, growing start-up scenes in Casablanca and Rabat, and government programs such as “Startup Venture Building” within the Digital Morocco 2030 strategy create incentives for innovative business models—such as AI-powered travel start-ups that can make sustainable offerings even more efficient. The challenge for new travel platforms will be not only to use AI, but also to tell Morocco’s stories authentically and explain their cultural backgrounds. To reveal Morocco’s depth, one must truly understand the country. In this sense, Morocco is a showcase for a modern, sustainable travel industry of the future.

Morocco thus shows that tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary: the combination of Ibn Battuta’s spirit of curiosity, the literary and artistic resonance from around the world, and a forward-looking, sustainable tourism policy makes the country an ideal destination for travelers who value culture, nature, and human encounters equally. Morocco remains a land full of stories—and with its sustainable tourism strategy, it is writing the next chapter in its rich travel literature.

Der Beitrag The Future of Tourism in Morocco – From Ibn Battuta to a Sustainable Modern Era erschien zuerst auf Inspiration Travel Guide.

The future of the travel industry will not be determined by technology alone. Many travel platforms will soon be technically perfect, and their content can be generated in infinite quantity by AI. However, most offerings remain limited to rather superficial travel tips. The decisive question is: How can travel content retain meaning, depth, and inspiration in a world flooded by mass production?

The answer lies in a philosophy that understands travel as a path of transformation—not merely a sequence of destinations. The Nine Doors of Travel Philosophy shows this path. It connects classical tradition (wisdom), philosophical meaning structures, and modern AI intelligence into a framework for qualitative content.

The Nine Doors: Structure and Meaning

The philosophy is divided into three levels, guiding travelers from the inner to the outer and finally into the social dimension:

• Inner (Doors 1–3): Metamorphosis, Transformation, Intuition – travel as self-exploration.
• Outer (Doors 4–6): Constellation, Transaction, Resonance – travel as resonance with places, people, cultures.
• Social (Doors 7–9): Alone, Couples, Groups – travel as relationship and community experience.

Each door unfolds into three aspects, resulting in 27 dimensions of travel. This matrix becomes an ordering principle for content that does not restrict diversity but charges it with meaning.

The Library: Tradition as a Foundation

The Nine Doors are not arbitrary; they are rooted in our real library of world literature. Three works are elemental:

• Homer, Odyssey – archetype of adventurous and transformative travel.
• Goethe, Italian Journey – self-discovery through culture, art, and nature.
• Ibn Battuta, Life’s Journey – encounter with the world as a social and intercultural fabric.

Thus, the three levels of the Nine Doors (Inner, Outer, Social) are both literary and philosophical in origin. The library provides wisdom, the philosophy provides the guiding thread, and AI updates both.

A Concrete Example: Door 2 – Transformation

To make the philosophy tangible, let us look at Door 2 – Transformation, inspired by Goethe’s Italian Journey and updated through a modern trip to Sicily.

For Goethe, Sicily was the “key to everything.” Here, he connected with the Greek virtues that shaped transformation: Courage, Attention, Gratitude.

On a contemporary journey to Sicily, these virtues came alive again:

• Courage in leaving the beaten path and exploring remote villages.
• Attention in moments of silence at the ancient temple of Agrigent, simply listening to wind and stone.
• Gratitude in encounters with locals, sharing meals and hospitality.

A modern resonance path might look like this:

1. Practice courage: choose an unplanned stop or a place off the tourist map.
2. Practice attention: set aside an hour without devices—just sensing and writing a single sentence in a travel journal.
3. Practice gratitude: end the day by noting three things you are thankful for.

Reflection question: “Which virtue has my journey awakened most strongly—and how can I carry it into daily life?”

This shows how the Nine Doors turn tradition and philosophy into living experiences.

AI as Amplifier: From the General to the Specific—and Back Again

Artificial intelligence in this architecture is not a substitute for human thought or experience but an amplifier:

• It analyzes sources, contextualizes ideas, and enables new content.
• It fills the 27 aspects of the Nine Doors with stories, inspiration, and experiential knowledge.
• It transforms the philosophy into a living content system that moves from the general to the specific—and back again through feedback.

This creates a dynamic cycle: content grows infinitely without losing its structure of meaning. Many travel destinations thus become part of a deeper experience.

Future of Content: Architecture of Resonance

What makes this philosophy unique is its function as a content management architecture:

• Tradition provides depth.
• Philosophy provides order.
• AI provides scalability.
• The platform provides lived experience.

Content is therefore not isolated but enters into resonance—with literature, art, nature, places, people, and communities. The result is a content universe that is both quantitatively infinite and qualitatively coherent.

Conclusion: Unity as the Goal

The Nine Doors of Travel are more than a model for travel. They are a vision for the future of content:

• A travel platform will no longer merely list destinations but reveal paths of transformation.
• The use of AI will not lead to confusion but, within a philosophical order, will unfold meaning.
• Travelers will not just collect places but experience unity—between inner, outer, and social worlds.

This is the essence of our philosophy: Travel as a path to holistic experience. Our content describes spaces of resonance. Technology serves as an amplifier of meaning, organizing the journey and linking it to the right offerings.

Der Beitrag The Nine Doors of Travel – A Philosophy for the Future of Content erschien zuerst auf Inspiration Travel Guide.

Sam Altman – one of the architects of AI

In many ways, Altman is reminiscent of a character from another era: Goethe’s Faust. The scientist was driven by a thirst for knowledge, by a restlessness to know more, to be able to do more, to create more. But with his insatiable thirst for knowledge came responsibility – and with responsibility came danger. In Goethe’s drama, it is Mephisto who allies himself with Faust in a sinister pact. In this pact, Faust dictates the modern law of permanent revolution, which must never rest for a moment, never reach its goal, but is always ‘on the run,’ writes Michael Jaeger in his essay Global Player Faust.
Altman, a driven man, cannot stop researching, building and believing. Regardless of whether one believes in the blessings of modern technology or not, the figure of the pioneer is a fascinating part of modern drama. There is no serious doubt that we are living amid a technological revolution. ‘In the past, we only asked our AI questions,’ explains Altman, ‘now we are entering a phase where these systems are starting to do things for us.’ His vision sounds fascinating: according to his prophecy, every idea that a human being has can be technologically implemented in the future. The speed at which technology is developing is breathtaking.

When a tool becomes an actor

It began with machine language understanding, and today an entire ecosystem of productive, automated, intelligent systems is unfolding: ChatGPT writes texts, designs marketing strategies, translates legal documents, develops software, and reshapes everyday life and work. The tool becomes an actor in the form of controllable agents – and the world begins to reorganise itself around these ideas.
As we know, the literary Faust was never satisfied with pure knowledge. He wanted to make an impact. Altman, who embodies this urge and at the same time runs a global company, plays a dual role. He is a researcher and creator, a discoverer and entrepreneur. Time and again, he is also accused of having political ambitions.
His belief in progress is based – if one is to believe his self-portrayal – on a moral core. The parallel to the Faust myth is obvious: the tragedy lies in the fact that he does not know whether what he creates will really lead to good.

Founded as an alternative

OpenAI was once founded as a non-profit organisation – a deliberately ethical alternative to the profit-driven tech giants. The concern: the superintelligence being tinkered with in the machine rooms of tech factories should not belong to an elite but should benefit all of humanity. Altman was considered a morally motivated voice in a sector that was all too often driven by market logic. But with the rapid progress of AI – and in the face of competition from China – the course changed. The development of large language models requires billions in investment, immense computing power and global engineering. To finance this, OpenAI opened itself up to capital in 2019. The result was a close partnership with Microsoft and integration into the world of capital interests.

Global race

A global race between language models for the most effective applications has long been underway. Critics accuse Altman of betraying his ideals. But perhaps it was less a betrayal than a Faustian pact with reality: if you really want to shape the world, you need power – and power rarely comes from pure idealism. As we know, Faust also had to leave the seclusion of his study to make his mark on the world, with all the ambivalence that entails.
What sets Altman apart is that he does not simply ignore the dark side of his actions. Or is it just a clever strategy to take the wind out of the sails of his critics from the outset? At a public event held by the US Federal Reserve in July, he was asked what kept him awake at night. His answer was remarkable:

He fears that a ‘bad guy’ could take over AI to develop weapons or engage in large-scale manipulation.

He is concerned about the mental health of users when emotional attachments to AI systems develop that replace real human relationships.

He sees a risk that politicians will one day have to follow a superintelligence because they consider its judgement to be superior – thereby relinquishing their democratic responsibility.

These assessments show that the OpenAI CEO is not a naive believer in a techno-utopian world. He considers the entire spectrum of possibilities – spreading both the beautiful and the terrifying visions. He is both a visionary and a sceptic. This is precisely what makes him a modern Faust figure: he dares to take a step into the unknown, seemingly not out of recklessness, but because he hopes that progress could be better than stagnation.
He also invests in visionary future models and founds start-ups working on nuclear fusion and biotechnology.

Altman on social justice

In addition to technical development and entrepreneurial scaling, Altman likes to talk about social justice. He officially advocates data protection and the regulation of AI systems, and he encourages his own development team to think about the legal basis for the privacy of its users.
He publicly reflects on forms of democratic control and on the question of how the wealth generated by AI should one day be distributed, at least in part. He brings user participation into play and advocates an unconditional basic income so that productivity gains benefit not only investors but everyone.
Altman sees the coming power constellation, an alliance of social media, artificial intelligence and capital interests – and is trying to influence the dynamics from within. This, too, is a way of resisting the temptations of this new world: not through moral purity, but through self-reflection in the face of one’s own power. However, a fundamental question remains, one that scientists such as Stewart Russell formulated years ago: Is AI a potentially ‘civilisation-ending technology’?

The criticism of Altman is harsh – and necessary. Some accuse him of megalomania, others of naivety, and still others of technological irresponsibility. Rumours about his private life are circulating. Some even see him as a new Oppenheimer: someone who knows he is unleashing a dangerous force – and does it anyway. What is interesting here is the shift in roles: in Goethe’s work, Mephisto is the negative whisperer who wants to use his powers to force Faust to pause. Today, it is the critics who take on this role: they warn, admonish and deny. ‘You are the spirit that always denies’ – not out of a desire to destroy, but out of justified concern. Their questions are essential: Where are the limits of technology? Who gets to set them? And what if no one can control it anymore?
Sam Altman is not at the end of a development, but right in the middle of it. Like Faust, he seems restless, visionary, threatening and idealistic at the same time. He sees what is possible – and what threatens us. And yet he carries on. Not out of hubris, but out of hope for what he believes is a better world. The crucial question is not whether Altman fails or triumphs. The challenge is whether we – as a society – preserve our ability to think, shape and decide for ourselves. In the mix of profit interests, power and technological dynamics, the need for control is obvious.

A book and a man of contradictions

Keach Hagey’s biography of him has just been published. The book reveals the contradictions, challenges and fascination in the life of one of America’s most powerful men. It not only recounts Altman’s role but also presents the history of the networking of the most successful protagonists of the American tech network. In the USA, a power ring – beyond state or social control – shapes the decisive questions of human development. The author introduces the reader to the mindset of the scene, revealing the motivations and – sometimes disturbing – dreams and philosophical concepts of its movers and shakers.

The journalist reminds us that, in this context, it sounds almost romantic that behind every great invention there were people at the beginning. Ideas do not arise in a vacuum, but usually in the form of colourful personalities. Altman is not an abstract representative of the industry: He is first and foremost a person full of contradictions – with a CV, an origin and an attitude. The technology he helps to shape is also a reflection of his biography.
But this is precisely where one of the final questions arises: Is this era of pioneers coming to an end? Will there eventually be no more ‘inventors’ because AI itself will begin to develop humanity’s ideas further – faster, deeper, more independently of their origins? Will biographies like Altman’s become footnotes in the future because the main characters of technological civilisation are no longer individuals – but a system?

If that were the case, Altman might indeed be the final Faust figure. Whether we like him or not, he is still a human being who asks questions before machines start asking them themselves. And perhaps he is also the last one who doubts.

Der Beitrag Faust 2.0, or how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is shaping – and fearing – the future. erschien zuerst auf Inspiration Travel Guide.