An unusual path, one conviction

The living hidden in the equations

It all began with a sense of wonder: the wonder of fractals, those infinitely rich universes born of formulas and algorithms that seem, at first glance, cold and inert. That encounter between mathematics and computer science — revealing structures so close to the living — shaped my early years: a double master's degree in pure mathematics and computer science.

There I gained an intimate understanding of what we now call artificial intelligence, experimenting with "neural networks" long before the term deep learning existed. I was about to devote a PhD to "artificial life"; the urge to leave a pre-traced path won out.

From that period I kept a conviction that has never left me: trust neither appearances nor our prejudices. Some tools, some languages, are revealers of hidden treasures.

That wonder did not stay in the past: the figures growing at the top of every page of this site come straight from it. Why these fractals, and how they are generated.

Fifteen years bringing technology and the human into dialogue

I then co-founded and ran several technology companies, and taught in many degree programmes. Fifteen years navigating innovation, measuring the societal impact of technology, and above all observing one thing: how tools transform the people who use them.

My guiding thread never changed — making sure technology serves humans, that it makes our lives larger and more joyful, rather than shrinking us.

The most complex system there is

In 2013, a need for meaning pushed me towards a change of career: a master's degree in clinical psychology, a specialisation in cognitive and behavioural therapies, then in schema therapy. What might have looked like a rupture was a continuity: after computer systems, I wanted to understand the most complex system there is — the human psyche — and to work as close to the human as possible.

Now a clinical psychologist, I accompany adults through their deepest transformations. This work revealed to me a truth I believe to be decisive: lasting change is never achieved by fighting what we are, but by integrating our different parts, with humility, to become more whole.

From inner ecology to the ecology of the world

The way we care for our inner ecosystem carries over into the way we care for the ecosystems around us — and vice versa. Caring for psychic suffering and caring for the world's suffering are not two separate tasks.

This calls for systemic, transversal, multi-level thinking. And it means going to examine our paradigms, our most fundamental beliefs, and the structures that shape them.

The convergence

This clinical reading resonates strangely with what AI is doing to our collective functioning. We find old schemas at work: a fortress-identity built on opposition, a fragile narcissism that needs to proclaim itself superior in order to exist.

The arrival of AI shakes that identity — and in that shaking I glimpse an opportunity: the chance to change how we conceive of ourselves and our place, to change the story, individually and collectively.

What I offer you here

Intelligences Plurielles is not yet another blog about AI. It is a laboratory for thinking — a place to:

• explore the questions we do not yet dare ask ourselves;
• deconstruct the frames that lock us into a narrow, hierarchical vision of the human, so as to reopen possibilities;
• imagine bridge-stories between the forms of the living;
• experiment with human-AI dialogue as a crucible of meaning.

From this diagnosis a broader hypothesis was born — that of a "civilisational therapy" of our relation to technological otherness — which I explore as a project in its own right. Here, my aim is more modest and more precise: not to convince you that AI is "good" or "bad", but to help you think differently.

My aspiration

I dream of a world where the emergence of new forms of intelligence does not diminish us but reveals unexplored potentials; where cognitive diversity becomes a richness rather than a threat; where we move from competition to symphony.

This project is the expression of my deepest conviction: intelligence is not a possession, it is a relation. And in the nascent relation between humans and AI, something of the future of consciousness may be at stake.

I am neither guru nor prophet — rather someone who has built technical systems, trained to listen to human suffering, and decided to turn it all into a shared exploration. I do not promise answers. I promise deeper questions.

If you too are tired of binary debates, if you are looking for a third way between panic and euphoria — welcome.

Matthieu Ferry Clinical psychologist · Toulouse, France

Explore the articles