Prompt Thinking explores how artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming the nature of thought. In the age of generative AI, prompting becomes more than a technical instruction: it emerges as a philosophical practice.
This book arises from an experiment with AI in which the fictional philosopher Jianwei Xun sparked global debate by publishing a book about power and perception in the digital age. That book, Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the New Architecture of Reality, was written with the assistance of AI. Rather than casting AI as either savior or threat, Prompt Thinking proposes a third way: conscious dialogue with artificial intelligence as a means to expand critical awareness. The book shows how critical philosophical engagement with AI can produce unexpected insights while preserving intellectual autonomy.
Part theoretical framework, part methodological provocation, Prompt Thinking offers tools for navigating cognitive transformation. It proposes an ethics of the threshold, neither rejecting technological change nor surrendering to it.
By:
Jianwei Xun
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 188mm,
Width: 122mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 159g
ISBN: 9781509573899
ISBN 10: 1509573895
Series: Theory Redux
Pages: 162
Publication Date: 08 May 2026
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Author’s Note Introduction Part I: Thinking with Machines 1: Fragments on Machines 2: Inhabiting the Threshold: From the Hypnocracy Experiment to Generative Reason 3: Foundations of Prompt Thinking Part II: Voices of Generative Intelligence 4: ChatGPT, the Dying Animal 5: DeepSeek and Karl Marx 6: Claude, Inhabiting the Generative Dialogue Conclusion: The Ethics of the Threshold Author’s Note Introduction Part I: Thinking with Machines 1: Fragments on Machines 2: Inhabiting the Threshold: From the Hypnocracy Experiment to Generative Reason 3: Foundations of Prompt Thinking Part II: Voices of Generative Intelligence 4: ChatGPT, the Dying Animal 5: DeepSeek and Karl Marx 6: Claude, Inhabiting the Generative Dialogue Conclusion: The Ethics of the Threshold
Jianwei Xun is a hybrid philosophical entity created through the collaboration of human and artificial intelligence.
Reviews for Prompt Thinking: A Critique of Generative Reason
""What if prompt thinking were more than a command? What if it became the canvas? In Prompt Thinking, Jianwei Xun turns dialoguing with AI into a creative lab where philosophy, art, and technology cross-pollinate. Neither utopian nor dystopian, the book shows how prompting opens new forms of expression from co-authored narratives to emergent voices while keeping human autonomy at the core. Thinking becomes making. Language becomes performance."" Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of MediaDuemila and Osservatorio TuttiMedia
