Artificial Intelligence and Human Self-Conception. On the Anthropological Challenges of Digitalisation

Abstract

The enormous progress in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) already represents the beginning of a fundamental change of society that will influence human life massively and in unforeseeable ways. Not only will AI become increasingly integrated into our everyday and working lives in the near future, and thus become indispensable components of our life world. The latest developments in AI research also pose a challenge to our understanding of human being and reality as such. This is because the success of AI almost inevitably invites comparisons with the human mind, leading to the question of whether humans are to be understood as biological input-output machines or, conversely, whether consciousness can be attributed to AI systems. On the basis of considerations coming from philosophy of mind and philosophy of technology, this paper aims to clarify the question of whether the specific properties of human subjectivity could in principle be realized by the principles and technical means invested in AI systems.