Managing in the Responsible Digital Age: Restoring Meaning to Technology – Gaël Giraud

Human and Machine: A False Debate

Gaël Giraud draws on Jacques Derrida’s seminar, The Animal That Therefore I Am, to highlight an intellectual trap. Opposing humans to machines is to rehash an old debate: the one that once opposed humans to animals. Since Homo habilis, our humanity has been inseparable from the tools we produce. Artificial intelligence is no exception.

It is an extension of our body and our thought — but it reacts back on us. The real question is not whether the machine thinks. It is to measure the effect that our own creations exert in return on our humanity.

Capitalism as a Capitalization Technique

At the heart of the book is a powerful idea: capitalism is not a fixed system. It is above all a technique — that of capitalization — born among Italian bankers in the 14th century. The principle is simple: every resource becomes a stock. And the value of this stock is the money it will generate in the future.

This logic first applied to forests, then to financial markets. Today, it directly concerns us. Our data, our behaviors, our online reactions: everything we give for free to platforms has become capital. Private companies derive revenue from it. When it’s free, you’re the product — this phrase summarizes a reality centuries old.

The Unpredictability of Markets and the Illusion of Control

The Pitfalls of Generative Artificial Intelligence

On AI, Gaël adopts a nuanced but clear position. He distinguishes two types of tools. First, specialized AIs — those that detect certain cancers with remarkable precision. Second, global generative AIs, like ChatGPT or Mistral. These have a significant limitation: they train on data produced by other AIs. As a result, they degrade generation after generation. From the sixth generation, experiments show that the model completely derails. Gaël speaks of mad cow disease.

Recommendation algorithms pose another problem. They are designed to create addiction. They trap users in bubbles, make their behaviors predictable — and thus transform them into capital. Gaël Giraud goes further: some of these algorithms push adolescents to suicide. Platform leaders know this. And they do nothing.

Human Decision: An Irreducible Element

The Commons Against the Privatization of the World

Drawing on Karl Polanyi and his work The Great Transformation, Gaël establishes a troubling parallel between the privatization of land, labor, and money in the 19th century — which led to the totalitarianisms of the 20th — and the digital capitalization of our data and knowledge today.

The absolutization of private property, whether it concerns oil subsoils or the Amazon, constitutes an existential threat to humanity. Faced with this, he advocates for the construction of commons, inspired by the work of Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate in economics: collective spaces with deliberated rules, accessible to all stakeholders, and capable of resolving conflicts without resorting to the law of the strongest.

Contribution as the Foundation of a Just Economy

How to measure each person’s true contribution within a team? Gaël relies on the Shapley value, a concept from game theory. The principle is simple: remove a person, and see what the project loses without them. That is their real contribution.

Applied to business, this method reveals uncomfortable realities. The worker responsible for wastewater evacuation? Without him, an entire city stops. His contribution is fundamental. Yet, he is far from being the highest paid. Gaël does not propose recalculating everything with an algorithm. But he invites awareness: our remuneration system is largely disconnected from each person’s real contribution.

The Golden Rule: Foundation of the Noosphere

How can we collectively build vital commons? Gaël Giraud invokes Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his notion of the Noosphere — this planetary collective consciousness. His answer is simple, yet demanding: the golden rule. Do to others what you would have them do to you.

To put oneself in another’s shoes, without leaving one’s own. This capacity for empathy is, according to him, the foundation of all family life, all businesses, all democracies. No algorithm can replace it. And the alternative to the golden rule? It is violence.

In a nutshell…

• Human and technology: inseparable from the beginning; but humans must not be reduced to capital (stock + future revenue streams).
• Responsible Digital: questioning uses, algorithms, and addiction; refusing the capitalization of people.
• AI: a tool for responsible decision-making, never a substitute; the decision remains “in the night,” human and irreducible.
• Manager’s role: giving meaning, supporting teams; applying the golden rule — putting oneself in another’s shoes. There is no corporate life without this.
• Contribution and commons: the company as a common; Shapley value; defending the commons against excessive privatization.
• Transition: education, transparency, collective choices; rejecting illusory predictability and financialization.

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