Who is Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? A Posthumanist Take on the AI Takeover Scenario

Abstract

Technology today plays a key role in human existence, supporting its very foundations. In this context, the author points out that the predominance of artificial intelligence (AI) as an idea should not be taken as a neutral statement. The fact of the accomplished takeover also does not imply uncritical acceptance and accordance with the ways of actualizing technical manifestations. On the contrary, it is a situation that pushes us to become aware of our position as individuals, as a society, as a species and as a planet. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the consequences of maintaining certain narratives. Cultural products are current mythologies that fundamentally define ideas about the present and the future. In reproducing the image of AI as the enemy, such symbolic schemes create it themselves. The author shows that the real source of danger lies in the human intentions behind the creation and implementation of AI. The technology itself should not be reduced to technical objects that we simply "use» but should be understood as an ontological manifestation partaking in the existential revealing. Thinking about technology in separation from humanity and ecology becomes futile. The author concludes that the anthropocentric attitude will not save humanity. Humanity can save itself only by understanding itself as a part of a planet, nets of ecological and technological emergences, expressions of cosmic phenomena.