AI is certainly human-centric. It is produced by humans to serve ends. It has entered everywhere- Medicine, policing, warfare, entertainment and even dating. Many are satisfied with this self-seeking human-centric approach of AI . Such an AI is actually nothing more than HAI ( Human-centric Artificial Intelligence) and is based on humanistic principle and values that were born as a result of modernism. Human-centric thinking and approach is profoundly anthropocentric. It seeks to have mastery over non-human world. Thanks to Posthumanism, there is a humbling of understanding of the locus of humanity in the world.
The posthumanist critique has opened several critical vistas in the academic scene. It is within this vein of thinking that we are challenged to think AI. Posthumanist critique has indeed problematised not just role and place of humans in the world but has questioned the human-centric AI worldview. These developments not just reposition the place and role of AI in the world but also calls us to rethink the place on non-human intelligence in our world. In this context, we have the challenger to think non-human intelligence in an other than human way. The non-human intelligence opens us to the intelligence of the created order as well as that which we know as divine intelligence.
This shift in the understanding of intelligence itself which was largely modelled on human intelligence truly challenges us to think intelligence in new ways in the light of non-human AI or Posthuman AI. It is challenging to think AI through a posthumanist lens. Yet it can indeed trigger new ways of thinking the divine, human and the world. We therefore, are entering a posthuman theology, anthropology and cosmology. We can no longer think theology, anthropology and cosmology in our usual humanist sense but have to abandon the instrumentalist view that sees the non-human world as a tool to human ends.
Unfortunately humanity appears to be blinded by human’s exceptional dexterity which might have been the main reason behind human’s drive to subdue the non-human world. Unfortunately, This drive to subdue the non-human world has come back to haunt humans themselves as humans seem to be pushed to the limits of themselves becoming vulnerable and are on the verge of annihilation due to the ravages of climate change.
Hence, we have the challenge to revisit our anthropocentric thinking that thinks human nature as the basis of normative, moral, cultural , legal and theological claims that elevate humans to the status of moral and political agents and relegate the non-humans to lesser more instrumental status. This anthropocentric thinking appears to think God in human image and likeness. God appears to be thus super version of humans.
Human capacity for reason, autonomy, impartiality, and universality justifies our human higher status and it is supposed to be lacking in non-humans is thought to be the basis of their inferiorization. Human exceptionalism is thought to be the basis of their superior status. Thus, we can find anthropocentrism in ancient Greek Aristotelian virtue ethics, medieval humanism, modern mechanism as well as contemporary philosophy of mind. This is why we have the challenge to interrogate human-centric discourses that think man as the measure of everything . This discourses amplify binaries like reason/ emotion, man/ animal nature/ nurture, body/ soul, man/woman, freedom/ slavery or humans/ robots which seem to justify our command and control over the non-human.
These and other dualisms produce and maintain hierarchies, ecologies, sociologies and theologies that rain today. These modes of thinking sees the non-human world as chiefly sub-human and God as trans-human yet viewed through human benchmarks. All this leads us to accept the ideology that humans as those who has master themselves and hence can also master the non-human world.
This mastery model has been deflated by the coming of AI. AI that present alternate intelligence and can be led to model non-human intelligence. Hence, we have the challenge to enter the world of posthumanist critique which overturns the mastery paradigm that still has a strangulating hold over us. We still think AI ethics through human-centric windows. The principle of no harm is certainly inviting AI not to harm humanity. But we have the challenge to design AI that will not just harm humanity but also the non-human world too. This also means humanist need that AI has to be solely under the control of humanity has to be rethought .
Posthumanities challenge us to embrace inter-species ethics which embraces symbiotic agencies and biosocial communities. It is an inter-ethics where humans are placed between non-humans and co-evolution between Humans and the non-humans is emphasised. Human then becomes an open category that grows symbiotically with and alongside the non-human world. Humans have this exceptional ability to recompose biosocial communities not on the basis of mastery but on the basis of living along side .
These new modes of being in the world are also new modes of belonging to the non-human world. Thinking AI from a posthumanist lens has a long way to go. It does promise us nothing less than a revolution. Just like modernity produced humanities in our universities, we still have a challenge to produce posthumanities, post humanist philosophies as well as theologies.
These posthumanist critiques will usher new ways of being humans. It will lead to new way of thinking intelligence. It will leads us to speculate about alien intelligence of other forms of intelligent life as well as divine intelligence and the intelligence of other non-human being in the world. We have the challenge to embrace posthumanist thinking of AI. Otherwise with the present human-centric thinking we shall be dissolved into transhumanism or extropianism . Hence , the challenge to think AI in the light of posthumanist critique is deeply urgent. This means we may have to give us philosophical atomism, hierarchism and mastery and embrace mystery and inter-being and inter-belonging.
