Beni Beeri Issembert

As Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into production systems, the need for robust content moderation and safety mechanisms has become critical. This paper presents the Ahimsa AI Framework, an open-source Python library that operationalizes Mahatma Gandhi's principle of Ahimsa (non-violence) as a multi-layer safety validation system for LLM applications. The framework addresses fundamental limitations in existing approaches, namely, high false positive rates from naive keyword matching and low adversarial robustness against paraphrased harmful content. We introduce a four-layer validation pipeline combining context-aware lexical analysis, semantic similarity detection using sentence transformers, external moderation API integration, and LLM-as-a-judge evaluation. Our approach demonstrates significant reduction in false positives through contextual pattern recognition while maintaining robust detection of harmful content, including semantically paraphrased requests. The framework provides separate validation strategies for user inputs and model outputs, comprehensive audit logging, and graceful degradation when optional components are unavailable. We discuss the philosophical foundations drawn from Gandhian ethics, the technical implementation, performance characteristics, and directions for future research in ethical AI systems.

This opinion paper re-examines the philosophy of Günther Anders, specifically his interconnected concepts of the "Promethean Gap," "Promethean Shame," and the "Phantom", as an indispensable theoretical framework for navigating the profound existential challenges of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) era. Anders’s mid-20th-century critique, articulated in his magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, centered on technologies like the atomic bomb that induce human inadequacy and mass media that deliver a disembodied "phantom" reality, thereby eroding lived experience. This paper posits that AI represents not merely an escalation but a synthesis of these phenomena. It widens the gap between our productive and imaginative capacities to a chasm while simultaneously endowing us with the ability to synthesize these phantoms on an unprecedented, personalized, and dangerously seductive scale. After a thorough exposition of Anders's core arguments, this paper will analyze the specific challenges of AI through this tripartite lens. The central thesis introduces and elaborates on a novel extension of Anders's theory, proposing that the AI era has engendered new, more profound forms of "Promethean Shame", namely Cognitive, Creative, and Ethical Shame. These distinct anxieties, the paper argues, are deeply intertwined with our new role as the potentially obsolete creators and unwitting consumers of AI-generated phantom realities. Ultimately, this analysis argues that a renewed scholarly engagement with Anders is a crucial tool for diagnosing the disorienting landscape of our increasingly synthetic world and for cultivating a necessary "Promethean Responsibility" against its totalizing effects.

Un ensemble de poèmes et réflexions s'articulant autour de la tension entre nature, humanité, mémoire et violence contemporaine. L'auteur convoque une écriture inspirée par la philosophie nietzschéenne du dépassement et par les expériences d'isolement volontaire. À travers des descriptions précises de paysages, comme les plateaux du Golan ou les forêts de cèdres, se dessine une quête de vérité brute, débarrassée des artifices modernes. Les poèmes évoquent la puissance silencieuse du monde naturel, en opposition à un monde urbain bruyant, déconnecté, où la barbarie resurgit sous différentes formes, notamment évoquée par les événements du 7 octobre. Le recueil mêle ainsi contemplation poétique et constat sombre sur l'état du monde, tout en appelant à une forme de résistance intérieure, une réappropriation du réel loin des illusions technologiques et des dogmes. La figure du "Sipo Matador", plante grimpante cherchant la lumière en s'appuyant sur un support, devient métaphore centrale de cette volonté de s'élever, malgré les forces contraires. Le texte invite finalement à habiter le monde pleinement, avec lucidité, sans concessions, dans un équilibre fragile entre retrait et engagement.

The advent of Generative AI has reignited debates about the nature of creativity. Central to this discourse is the parallel between how humans draw inspiration from past art and how AI models utilize pre-training data. This essay argues that this parallel is not merely an analogy but a functional reality: the AI pre-training phase is the direct technological equivalent of human artistic inspiration, and creativity itself is best understood as a process of combinatorial synthesis. We will demonstrate that both human and machine rely on a vast corpus of prior work to synthesize novel creations. Consequently, we argue that restricting AI’s access to data during this crucial inspirational phase, a process we term "creative starvation", would not foster originality but instead lead to the technical and economic "death" of the generative AI industry, crippling its potential as a transformative tool for art, culture, and cognition.

This essay ventures that humanity, having long projected God in its own image, now constructs a new, perhaps more potent, instituting figure: artificial intelligence. The divine, I argue, historically functioned as an interpretive, metaphorical, and stabilizing projection. AI, in stark contrast, emerges as a transformative agent, actively reshaping human behavior, affect, and identity. Where the divine image offered a symbolic means for self-reflection, AI presents a prescriptive mirror – one that configures rather than merely reflects. This marks a radical reversal in our anthropological genesis: humanity, no longer the sole author of its image, increasingly becomes the effect of its own technical progeny. Drawing on Greek and Hindu philosophical traditions, alongside the critical lens of thinkers like Günther Anders, this paper interrogates the ontological and ethical reverberations of this profound shift.

The concept of human identity has often been framed through economic and materialist paradigms, particularly in Marxist and industrial thought, which have emphasized the proletarian and agricola—the laborer and the productive farmer—as the primary agents of historical development. However, this economic reductionism has marginalized an alternative and equally fundamental mode of existence: the paganus—the rural dweller whose relationship to the world is defined not by labor, but by dwelling, continuity, and embeddedness in place. This paper critically re-examines the paganus as an ontological category distinct from economic determinism, drawing upon phenomenology, ecological philosophy, and political thought to argue for a renewed understanding of human identity beyond its productive function. By engaging with thinkers such as Edward Casey on the topology of place, Martin Heidegger on dwelling, and Henry David Thoreau on experiential solitude in nature, this paper explores the existential depth of inhabiting a place rather than merely exploiting it. The marginalization of the paganus reflects broader cultural and political shifts that have privileged mobility, urbanization, and deterritorialization over rootedness, continuity, and place attachment. This paper contends that the restoration of paganus as a meaningful philosophical category is crucial in addressing contemporary issues such as ecological alienation, the erosion of cultural memory, and the search for belonging in a rapidly urbanizing world. Rather than advocating for a retreat into traditionalism, this study calls for an expansion of human identity beyond economic constraints, reclaiming dwelling as a fundamental human experience. The paganus, far from being an obsolete relic of the past, emerges as a necessary counterpoint to modernity’s abstraction and displacement, offering a vision of human existence that is rooted in place, history, and the enduring rhythms of the natural world.

This opinion paper delves into the philosophical underpinnings and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) development through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Three Metamorphoses," exploring the stages from the camel, through the lion, to the envisioned child phase within the AI context. Amidst growing concerns over AI's ethical ramifications, including job displacement, biased decision-making, and misuse potential, this analysis seeks to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding AI's evolution and its socio-technical effects on society. The discourse begins by contextualizing AI within the myth of Prometheus, suggesting that, like the myth, AI development harbors both the promise of unprecedented technological advancement and the peril of unforeseen consequences. Drawing insights from various philosophical perspectives, including those of Geoff Hinton, Elon Musk, Mircea Eliade, Gunther Anders, and notable moralists and existentialists, the paper critiques the current trajectory of AI, emphasizing the need for ethical frameworks and responsible innovation. Through the metaphorical stages defined by Nietzsche—the burden-bearing camel representing AI's foundational learning phase, the rebellious lion challenging human capabilities, and the child signifying the potential for artificial general intelligence (AGI) to autonomously create values—the paper posits that AI's development parallels a transformative journey that could redefine human civilization. It argues for a balanced approach to AI development, one that harmonizes technological advancement with ethical considerations, ensuring AI's alignment with human well-being and justice. The conclusion calls for a reflective engagement with AI, urging developers and policymakers alike to consider the deeper philosophical questions posed by AI's integration into the fabric of human life.

Nerval, une crise dans la pensée. Personnage et oeuvre aux limites de la folie dont l'approche se révèle particulièrement complexe. Il est l'initiateur du symbolisme et d'un type de pensée à analyser en terme épistémologique et littéraire. Auteur d'une oeuvre étrange, Voyage en Orient, que Paul Bénichou, dans l'Ecole du désenchantement, considère le fondement de deux principes à priori contradictoires: la "déborde" d'érudition, la littérature de bibliothèque et, paradoxalement, la naissance du "je" littéraire moderne, il dérange en ce sens qu'il ne parvient quasiment jamais à distinguer, tant sur le plan biographique que fictionnel, l'expérience vécue de l'expérience rèvée. Il réhabilite l'imagination par le biais de l'érudition. Et c'est ainsi qu'il élabore une méthode nouvelle pour explorer et découvrir ce qui se trouve entre le vécu et l'"imaginé," méthode que nous nous proposons d'analyser.