The breath of the machine

To do or to be - what the machine can't grasp

Martin Blais

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Hardback

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English

Mbim.CA
01 September 2025

Philosophy of mind; Artificial intelligence; Mind, Body, Spirit: thought & practice

Artificial intelligence can teach you, write your songs, shape your desires. It can talk to you like a friend or guide you like a coach. It's brilliant. It's useful. It can ""do"" anything... Except breathe. Except love. Except be.

'The Breath of the Machine' is not a book about technology. It's a book about us.

Tomorrow, artificial intelligence will allow an employee to do 40 hours of work in 10.

The real question isn't technological, it's human: what will we do with these 30 freed-up hours?

Will we demand that this employee produce four times as much? Or will we offer them the time to do something else? The time to breathe with their loved ones, to love, to create useless things, to finally live.

In this philosophical narrative, as lucid as it is touching, Martin Blais doesn't speak of the future of work, but of the future of our humanity. He explores a powerful idea: what if the greatest wealth AI could offer us wasn't a gain in productivity, but a gain in humanity?

Drawing on the powerful distinction between ""doing"" (the performance of the machine) and ""being"" (the richness of human consciousness), this narrative guides us through the great challenges that AI poses to us:

Words without an author: What is the worth of moving verses when no soul has birthed them? Ideas without thought: How can we distinguish an authentic discovery from a mere statistical recombination? Emotions without a heart: Can we trust an empathy simulated by a cold mirror? Decisions without a conscience: Can we delegate the weight of a life to a calculation that feels nothing?

By revealing how AI, used wisely, can free us from a portion of ""doing,"" this book offers us a historic opportunity to dedicate ourselves to deepening our being.

More than an essay on technology, The Breath of the Machine is a guide for the soul-a manifesto for choosing not to fear the future, but to infuse it with our own humanity.

By: Martin Blais
Imprint: Mbim.CA
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 522g
ISBN: 9782982373877
ISBN 10: 2982373874
Pages: 262
Publication Date: 01 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Martin Blais is an actor, author, and explorer of consciousness. His path-marked by bold turns, from aeronautics to the artistic stage, from inner silence to engaged speech-reflects an essential quest: to understand what it means to be human in the age of machines. Trained in the art of inhabiting roles, he has always sought to embody what lies beneath appearances, through hypnosis, meditation, theatre, and expanded states of consciousness.

Reviews for The breath of the machine: To do or to be - what the machine can't grasp

Joël Legendre As I read further, I felt that this book is not just about technology. It is about us: about how we stay alive and do not lose ourselves in a rapidly changing world. And that feels good. Bhaskar Goswami There are books that inform, and there are books that transform. The Breath of the Machine belongs, without a shadow of a doubt, to the second category. [...] This is more than a book. It is a transmission. A breath. A gift. Connie Rotella This book is a breath that makes you want to pause for a moment, to ask yourself what you want to protect in this world that is changing so quickly, and to keep open that space where you can still be yourself. Georges Gay Far from stripping us of our humanity, artificial intelligence could instead free us from repetitive tasks and allow us to devote more time to what truly matters: dreaming, creating, and moving. Richard Jutras His journey, like his book, is the reflection of that flame: an honest, demanding search that is not afraid to step outside the lines to find its own truth. Joseph Lebel A necessary and luminous essay that questions our relationship to doing and being. A striking and poetic reflection on artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.