Seminar: CHM Seminar: AI, Gods, and Selves: Incredibly Effective Illusions

When prompting an LLM, we have a sense of talking to an intelligent agent although we know that no such agent exists. This indicates a certain habit of ascribing language use to (illusionary) conscious agency. Because communication and thought processes both operate in language, we presume that if something meaningful is said it must have been said by a “thinking thing.” This paper argues that the reification of such a ‘speaking and thinking thing” has changed over the course of history. Some evidence suggests that in prehistoric times, important thoughts were perceived as communicated by (illusionary) gods or spirits. Thinking and speaking operated with a ‘sense of gods” as the relevant “intelligence” whom humans orienting themselves to. The sense of gods was gradually replaced by a “sense of self.” The authorship of thought and language was insourced to (illusionary) reified intelligent selves. Society and thought were reoriented from gods to “sovereign individuals.” Along with the rise of AI a new outsourcing process seems to have been initiated. The communication of relevant information is increasingly reoriented from persons to an ((illusionary) “artificial intelligence.” We may be witnessing the rise of a new “sense of AI”

Hans-Georg Moeller is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau. He authored numerous books including You and Your Profile: Identity after Authenticity, Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi (with Paul D’Ambrosio), The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality, The Radical Luhmann, The Philosophy of the Daodejing, and, most recently, The Enigma of Gender: Why Identity is Neither Individual nor Essential (all with Columbia University Press). He is content creator of the YouTube philosophy channels Carefree Wandering and Philosophy in Motion.

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