Tom Chatfield: Why We Must See Technology as Part of Ourselves
4 minute read
Between Code and Consciousness is a series by The Beautiful Truth asking the question: What does it mean to think, create or decide in the age of AI? Nine leading voices reflect on artificial intelligence – not as an abstract force, but as a tool whose worth depends on how it honours our humanity.
Tom Chatfield is a philosopher, commentator and author of ten books, including Wise Animals and How to Think. His work explores how digital tools shape thought, behaviour and society. A former columnist for the BBC and Prospect magazine, he has advised organisations – from Google and the World Economic Forum to the British government – on the ethics and impact of technology. Chatfield argues that digital tools are not neutral but embedded with values and assumptions – and that a grounded understanding of ourselves is the first step towards using AI critically.
“For as long as humans have existed, we’ve been reinventing ourselves through tools: stones and fire, language, literacy. What’s happening now, while new, has deep roots.”
What inspired your book Wise Animals and why is this evolutionary lens crucial to understanding technology today?
I started with a warning in treating technologies as if they’re utterly unprecedented – as if history has nothing to teach us. For as long as humans have existed, we’ve been reinventing ourselves through tools: stones and fire, language, literacy. What’s happening now, while new, has deep roots.
Could you explain what you mean by ‘magical thinking’?
The technologies we make are parts of our minds, our societies, ourselves. Outsource counting onto your fingers, memory to paper, arithmetic to a calculator – you’re altering what it means to be human.
Magical thinking is simplification. It’s saying technology will either save us or destroy us, and that we’re powerless – on rails toward an inevitable future. I think the reverse is true. Yes, technology is difficult to understand and control, but with critical engagement, we can ground it with what we know about ourselves.
“Magical thinking is simplification. It’s saying technology will either save us or destroy us, and that we’re powerless – on rails toward an inevitable future.”
Tom Chatfield
In Wise Animals, you talk about love, care and cooperation as central to humanity. Why are these ideas important in the AI conversation?
Study the mind and you find our motivations are not primarily rational, they’re emotional. We are embodied beings, hyper-social and hyper-cooperative compared to other apes. The future is literally about children, who need nurture, attention, care.
Alasdair MacIntyre, in Dependent Rational Animals, emphasises that we move from dependency to dependency. Talking about care clarifies that autonomy and efficiency are not the whole story.
We tell stories, draw pictures, play games not just to produce outcomes but to become ourselves. This is how we learn to participate in society, to make meaning. If people are rushed, pressured or isolated, they’re vulnerable to manipulation, error and misery. Thriving societies depend on care as much as on efficiency.
Do you think AI is overhyped, or are we right to be having this conversation?
It’s reshaping our relationship with knowledge and culture, but it’s part of a vast, globalised system – data, silicon, labour, geopolitics. People focus on the shiny tip of the iceberg, while underneath lies history, politics and supply chains.
So yes, companies prefer grand talk of AI because it’s easier than addressing regulation and messy realities, but every technology has been a lightning rod for anxiety – trains, telephones, typewriters. Ultimately, it’s muddy and complicated. The best response is to ask better questions and to keep critically engaged with the tools that are, quite literally, parts of ourselves.
