Mainstream media report that governments and business leaders see AI as an "extinction-level threat" to humans[1,2,3]. In post-humanism, we find, besides conceptional tools for thinking technology in an indeterministic way[4,5,6] argumentations for singularity[7], accelerationism[8] and appeasement[9] towards *strong AI*. Although I do not concur with criticism of post-humanism that aims to defend the Enlightenment at best[10], and white male hegemony at worst, I still attempt to draw attention to what I see to be a fallacy, that computational machines could be autonomous to the extent the media, and some post-humanists, claim. In contrast, I assert that the reliance of computational machines to run on algorithmic code makes the concept of singularity logically impossible: Through language, machines are extensions of the cognitive practices that constitute the language they run on[12]. The computer is to the brain what the hammer is to the hand. This is not an anthropocentric viewpoint, just a look at material evidence of human action in the Anthropocene from the level playing field of the actor network[13].

We need to rethink the way we develop AI[14]. This is Hannah Arendt’s ethical imperative to “think what we’re doing”, to not rely on “artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking”. Failing that, we are “thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is”[15]. That the agency in AI is not autonomous but an extension of (more or less curated) human thinking, provides a trojan horse for whoever is controlling the machine. 

I am not disputing the potential dangers of technologies. But I contest the deterministic conception of technology that attributes the dangers to the technology itself. The fear of AI relies on the construct of autonomous machines as a malevolent other. As machines are socio-material arrangements[16], the harms and dangers of AI are the direct result of (sloppy) human thinking. To attribute them to an external, *deus ex machina* may be convenient for the hegemony that profits from that fear, but it is a cop-out from collective responsibility. To exploit post-humanism for a philosophical *placet* for such endeavours just shows how far into society the AI Trojan horse has advanced.


[1]https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/12/business/artificial-intelligence-ai-report-extinction/index.html

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/technology/ai-threat-warning.html

[3]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65779181

[4]Donna J.Haraway,(2004)The Haraway Reader.NewYork,Routledge.

[5]Pyyhtinen,O.,&Tamminen,S.(2011).We have never been only human
https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499611407398

[6]Barad,Karen,(2007).Meeting the Universe Halfway.Durham,DukeUniversityPress.ISBN9780822339175.

[7]Nath,R.,Manna,R.(2023)From Posthumanism to Ethics of AI.AI&Soc38,185–196. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01274-1

[8]Brusseau,J.(2023)Mapping AI Avant-gardes in time.DiscovArtifIntell3,32. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-023-00080-6

[9]N.Katherine Hayles,(2017).Unthought:The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious.UniversityOfChicagoPress.

[10]Osborne,T.,&Rose,N.(2024).Against Posthumanism.Theory,Culture&Society,41(1),3-21. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764231178472

[12]Anonymised(2023)

[13]Bruno Latour,(2005)Reassembling the Social.OxfordUniversityPress.

[14]Bender,Gebru,et al.(2021).On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots.InProceedings(FAccT'21).ACM,NY,USA.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

[15]Hannah Arendt,(1958).The Human Condition,Anchor Books.UniversityOfChicagoPress.

[16]Lucy Suchman,(2007)Human-Machine Reconfigurations. CambridgeUniversityPress.