== 27.05.2025 - 12:00 - 13:00 (local Lübeck time, CEST): Hybrid: Hörsaal des Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität zu Lübeck (Königstrasse 42 | D 23552 Lübeck) and online via WebEx
Artificial Intelligence, Calculative Reason, and Technical Domination: Lessons from Husserl, Heidegger, and Marcuse By Niclas Rautenberg (University of Hamburg)
Abstract: The run on artificial intelligence (AI) is also a race for rendering the world quantifiable. As has recently been observed, the ultimate goal of Silicon Valley and its copycats is ‘to capture the planet in a computationally legible form’ (Crawford 2021). This endeavour and thus AI, as revolutionary as they may seem, are not entirely new; in fact, research on AI is only the newest expression of a drive towards mathematisation that reaches back to the Renaissance. This paper draws on the critical analyses of Edmund Husserl and (the later) Martin Heidegger to bring into relief the genealogical origins and the attitudinal patterns underlying mathematisation and calculative thinking. Firmly grounded in the lived reality of practically engaged people, science and technology progressively obfuscate and lose track of their lifeworldly foundation. Moreover, mathematisation becomes the servant of a (self-)alienating thirst for domination that reduces human beings themselves to mere ‘stock’, ready to be controlled, computed, and replaced. Yet, drawing on these two authors does not suffice to fathom AI’s socio-technical embeddedness. Instead, following Herbert Marcuse, we must turn phenomenology critical and reveal calculative reason’s relation to capitalist modes of production. The insight into AI’s socio-historical conditions of possibility is crucial. Technology is never purely scientific and technical; it is an inherently existential and political matter.
