The Re-enchanted Universe of AI: The Place for Human Agency

Generative AI designed as a digital tool to communicate with humans raises a series of questions to what extent ChatGPT and its rivals approach, match, and eventually may surpass human cognitive abilities. I propose to situate their amazing performance in a longer historical perspective of the evolution of human knowledge that occurs by externalizing or “outsourcing” knowledge operations, beginning with the invention of writing. However, the latest developments confront us with digital technologies that render it increasingly difficult to distinguish genuinely human characteristics and abilities from artificially created ones. This renders the question of human agency and the extent to which it is transferred to machines as crucial for digital humanism, especially when we reflect on some uncanny resemblances with the immanent “enchanted” cosmic order in which our ancestors lived.