Don’t make Marshal Foch’s mistake on AI | Letters
TL;DR
Peregrine Rand reflects on Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat and the future threat of artificial intelligence Emma Brockes’ article struck a chord (It’s finally happened: I’m now worried about AI. And consulting ChatGPT did nothing to allay my fears, 8 April). I am reading Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, in which the eminent French historian and soon-to-be-executed resistance worker gives a first-hand account of the collapse of the French army in 1940. He attributes the debacle at least in part to a failure of imagination on the part of the French general staff, who were incapable of grasping that technology, and war, had fundamentally changed since 1918. Brockes’ article suggests that we, and our leaders, are suffering from the same inability to understand that a technology which is currently amusingly alarming will develop in less amusing ways – the future Marshal Ferdinand Foch had, according.
Nauti's Take
The Foch comparison is sharp: institutional failure tends to come not from lack of information, but from failure of imagination — and AI is testing exactly that capacity right now. The opportunity is in taking that warning seriously enough to act structurally, not just rhetorically.
Nauti sees the bigger risk in leaders who acknowledge the comparison but still do not change how they plan.
Summary
Peregrine Rand reflects on Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat and the future threat of artificial intelligence Emma Brockes’ article struck a chord (It’s finally happened: I’m now worried about AI. And consulting ChatGPT did nothing to allay my fears, 8 April).
I am reading Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, in which the eminent French historian and soon-to-be-executed resistance worker gives a first-hand account of the collapse of the French army in 1940. He attributes the debacle at least in part to a failure of imagination on the part of the French general staff, who were incapable of grasping that technology, and war, had fundamentally changed since 1918. Brockes’ article suggests that we, and our leaders, are suffering from the same inability to understand that a technology which is currently amusingly alarming will develop in less amusing ways – the future Marshal Ferdinand Foch had, according
Sources