Who is Jianwei Xun? My perspective on rethinking philosophy in the age of GenAI

4

October

2025

5/5 (1)

A compelling example of Generative AI co-creation, a “philosophical experiment” that perfectly illustrates its own thesis, a powerful metaphor for our AI-disrupted era. The bestselling (fake) philosopher who brilliantly analysed digital manipulation but does not actually exist.

What if the most insightful philosopher of the digital age wasn’t a “who”, but a “what”?

Initially presented as a Hong Kong-born philosopher based in Berlin, Jianwei Xun quickly gained traction in European intellectual circles for his work Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the New Architecture of Reality. The book reports a sharp analysis of how power operates in the digital age not through oppression, but through the stories we consume and believe. Its central concept, “hypnocracy”, describes a new form of manipulation, where power works by shaping our very state of consciousness through algorithms, filter bubbles, and personalised timelines, getting readers into a state of collective trance.

Ironically, the book embodies the very phenomenon it is critical of, being it an AI-generated text about AI-driven manipulation itself. Indeed, its true author is the Italian essayist and publisher Andrea Colamedici. He revealed that Jianwei Xun is a “distributed philosophical entity,” a collaborative construct between human intelligence and artificial intelligence systems. Colamedici used AI platforms, specifically ChatGPT and Claude, not as a ghostwriter, but as an “interlocutor” (El Paìs, 2025). He would present ideas, challenge the AI’s assertions, request deeper analysis, and even pit different AIs against each other in a “fertile conflict”, using a method he terms “ontological engineering” (Le Grand Continent, 2025). He estimates about 40% of the book’s early drafts were AI-generated, which he then curated, merged, and refined.

To solidify the persona and anchor it in the academic digital ecosystem, Colamedici had built a detailed fictional biography, a professional website, and uploaded scholarly publications to Academia.edu. He even created a fictional literary agent, Sarah Horowitz, to handle communications with journalists and publishers. The deception unraveled in April 2025, when the journalist of L’Espresso Sabina Minardi investigated and found that the philosopher was a pseudonym for this human-AI collaboration. Her suspicions arose from “linguistic clues”, a “phraseology that seemed designed to hypnotise”, and the evasiveness of the author (L’Espresso, 2025). As a response, Colamedici clarified its intent: to let the medium become the message. Readers and the media weren’t just reading about a digitally constructed reality; they were participating in one, being “hypnotised” by a coherent and persuasive intellectual voice that had no physical existence.

My Personal Experience: Contextualising the Case as a Mirror for Our Times

Personally, I reckon that Jianwei Xun experiment is a Rosetta Stone for understanding the implications of Generative AI in the reality we are living in. Colamedici insists that Jianwei Xun is not a pseudonym but a “device” and an “emergent form of authorship” (Le Grand Continent, 2025). He resists the idea that Xun is merely the avatar of a literate person using a tool, proposing instead a “third space where human and artificial cognition meet”. What can be defined as a conceptual deepfake, Jianwei Xun was conceived to create a visceral, memorable understanding of a complex philosophical idea.

At this point, we as readers – and consumers – are forced to completely rethink what originality and authority mean. Not only does this represent a fundamental challenge for any content-driven digital strategy, but is also points to a unique strategic opportunity: using AI-generated narratives to build immersive brand stories or educational experiences that resonate on a deeper level than traditional content – this way, moving beyond shallow, throwaway AI-generated content. Xun’s case also landed in a regulatory grey area, running afoul of the European AI Act, which mandates transparency for AI-generated content. Therefore, the (initial) failure of media and institutional gatekeepers to discern the artificial from the human of this product helps underscoring a dual imperative: leveraging AI for innovative engagement while simultaneously building robust AI literacy and validation processes.

To me, Jianwei Xun’s Hypnocracy holds up an uncomfortable mirror. Even though I initially felt uncomfortable due to its deception, I cannot dismiss its brilliance as a performative critique. In a powerful yet dangerous way, it proves that in the age of AI, a compelling narrative, regardless of its origin, can capture attention and influence thought. As already mentioned, our responsibility should be to advocate for clear disclosures when AI is used a collaborator, building trust in an era of synthetic content. On the other hand, we should move from passive consumption to active, critical co-creation, using AI as a “maieutic” interlocutor to nurture and challenge our own thinking – much like Colamedici did, attempting to follow Socrates’ footsteps in the era of digitalisation. Thus, the goal should be to engage with the machine to sharpen our own critical faculties, without getting stuck in an algorithmic echo chamber, but aiming at a more innovative, responsible, and human-centric approach.

Because the era of hypnocracy is here, and we have to navigate it with our eyes wide open.

Sources

Limòn, R. (2025, April 7). Jianwei Xun, the supposed philosopher behind the hypnocracy theory, does not exist and is a product of artificial intelligence. El País (English). https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-04-07/jianwei-xun-the-supposed-philosopher-behind-the-hypnocracy-theory-does-not-exist-and-is-a-product-of-artificial-intelligence.html

Gressani, G. (2025, April 4). Chi è Jianwei Xun: una conversazione con Jianwei Xun. Le Grand Continent.https://legrandcontinent.eu/it/2025/04/04/chi-e-jianwei-xun-una-conversazione-con-jianwei-xun/

Minardi, S. (2025, April 7). Ipnocrazia: best seller libro – chi è Xun. L’Espresso.https://lespresso.it/c/inchieste/2025/4/7/ipnocrazia-best-seller-libro-chi-e-xun/53621

Carelli, E. (2025, April 3). Ipnocrazia, intelligenza artificiale, scrittura, filosofia. L’Espresso.https://lespresso.it/c/opinioni/2025/4/3/ipnocrazia-intelligenza-artificiale-scrittura-filosofia-lespresso/53598

The New York Times. (2025, April 30). The hypnocracy: AI philosopher book. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/world/europe/hypnocracy-ai-philosopher-book.html

Tlon (2025). Ipnocrazia. Trump, Musk e la nuova architettura della realtà. Jianwei Xun. https://tlon.it/ipnocrazia/

Please rate this

Does Industry 4.0 Require a New Digital Strategy Tool?

7

October

2020

No ratings yet.

Fifteen years ago, the music industry looked very different than it looks today. Back then, we were probably wondering what major record labels were doing in their board rooms. Now, those traditional business models are entirely disrupted by the internet. Today, it’s Spotify and other major streaming companies that are dictating the pace of innovation and change within the music sector. “Traditional” industry boundaries are not self-evident anymore. Does the rise of industry 4.0 require a new digital strategy tool?

The digital age has disrupted many industries. In an earlier blog, I described how the rise of IoT blurs industry lines within the healthcare industry. Besides this, there are many other examples available that demonstrate how industry boundaries are getting broken (think of the intersection of banking and technology). Does the notion of working in one industry still even exist?

I think that all the students within the BIM programme (or any other business programme for that matter) are familiar with Porter’s Five Forces model. This strategic tool starts off with mapping out the industry and assesses whether barriers are needed to stop rivals from entering that industry (Porter, 2015). However, does thinking about industry boundaries still make sense in the digital age? Increasingly more, we see that industry boundaries are becoming blurred (Atluri, Dietz and Henke, 2017). The new industrial revolution, industry 4.0, relies on the connectedness between people and devices. Through your smartphone, you have access to your smart car, your health status, and even your fridge (as a figure of speech).

I wonder, how relevant is Porter’s tool in the current age of everything being connected to one and another. Are business managers in need of a new strategic tool that supports them in their digital strategy?

Most products used to be described as vertical (Henfridsson et al. 2018). Take a car, for example. The value of a car is created by combining all the different parts that are needed for the car to work. Car manufactures compete with other manufacturers in the same industry, based on price, engine qualities, or other attributes.

However, in the digital world, value is not created vertically, but horizontally through companies cutting across industry boundaries (Henfridsson et al. 2018). For example, car buyers nowadays value whether their new car is able to integrate with their Google Assistant (i.e. Google Home). So now, car manufacturers don’t just worry about their direct competitors; they’re also wondering what happens in the headquarters of Google.

blur

According to Henfridsson (2018), creating value through connections is how to prosper in the digital world. That involves actively leaving products open, not building barriers. This is because digital products or services can be recombined with other resources to make a new service, which, in turn, creates new value. For example, the combination of musicians, the internet, and the smart use of algorithms has contributed to the creation of the digital platform we know as Spotify.

Another example is Google Maps. Maps has been embedded in around 2,400 other services, thanks to its open API (Henfridsson et al. 2018). And not by building a barrier around it… How does this look like? Take the app Runkeeper. It uses the API from Apple Maps to create new value for users, namely: tracking their run.

Henfridsson et al. (2018) have created the value spaces framework as a new strategy tool for the digital age. If you’re interested in this topic, I recommend you to read this article in more depth!

What do you think: does the digital age require a new strategic tool? Is Porter still relevant within industry 4.0? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below!

 

 

References

Atluri, V., Dietz, M. and Henke, N. (2017). Competing in a world of sectors without borders. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/competing-in-a-world-of-sectors-without-borders [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019].

Henfridsson, O., Nandhakumar, J., Scarbrough, H. and Panourgias, N. (2018). Recombination in the open-ended value landscape of digital innovation. Information and Organization, 28(2), pp.89–100.

Porter, M.E. (2015). How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/1979/03/how-competitive-forces-shape-strategy [Accessed 4 Oct. 2020].

Please rate this