Who or What Is Human? Rereading Heidegger in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

By all accounts, the machinations of artificial intelligence today are propelling us into a decidedly non-human future. One of the godfathers of AI, Nobel laureate Prof. Geoffrey Hinton, recently suggested that the odds of artificial intelligence erasing humanity entirely over the next 30 years are between 10% and 20%. Our traditional institutions, including our universities, appear helpless and naïve in the face of this prospect. In his 1954 “The Question Concerning Technology,” the philosopher Martin Heidegger avers that “the essence of technology is nothing technological.” This graduate seminar provides us with an opportunity to reread the later Heidegger’s work in the context of today’s pressing concerns, with a focus on language, poiesis (creative bringing-forth), art, and the “enframement” in which technicity entraps humanity. Who or what is the human being? How can AI be resisted? (In English; diverse fields welcome.)