Humanism in the Age of AI

Ethics, Aesthetics, and Social Critique
Auflage - Neueauflage
ISBN: 978-3-8376-7664-8
Verlag: transcript

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 306 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 473 g

Reihe: Technosophy

1. Why did you choose this topic?

A paradox brought me here. Since ChatGPT, the ›human‹ has resurfaced in tech discourse just as the humanities had long discredited the human and its anthropocentrism as exclusionary and ideological. The ›human‹ now belongs to technologists and policymakers who center it in AI ethics. Through my 2024 ›Humanism and AI‹ conference and the resulting volume, I ask what the human and humanism mean today, and whether they can be repurposed as a locus of inquiry, care, and resistance to datafication.2.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

The volume refuses the two options on offer: the technologists’ uncritical appropriation of the ›human‹ and the humanities’ wholesale dismissal of it. On one hand, in bringing together contributions from literature, philosophy, art, neuroscience, and law, it approaches AI as a self-portrait of the human through sedimented data, now made interactive. On the other hand, it recasts humanism not as a defense of essence but as fidelity to what resists optimization.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

The debate is live. For instance, industry voices like Suleyman’s 'Towards Humanist Superintelligence' (2025) invoke humanism as controllability and service to human ends; Fioravanti and Vaccaro’s Humanism and Artificial Intelligence (2025) treats it as an ethical framework for AI in business, law, and care. This volume shares the urgency but treats ›the human‹ not as a normative anchor but as a historically unstable problem, shaped by abstraction and mediation that both precede and exceed AI.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

Leif Weatherby.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

An interdisciplinary volume reclaiming the human from its appropriation by AI discourse, rethinking humanism as fidelity to what resists optimization.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ilievska, Ana

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Medizinische Soziologie & Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Digitale Medien, Internet, Telekommunikation
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Invalidität, Krankheit und Abhängigkeit: Soziale Aspekte

Über Autor(innen)

Ilievska, Ana
Ana Ilievska is an assistant professor of global liberal arts at the American University of Beirut – Mediterraneo. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Southern European and Mediterranean literature and thought, with particular attention to humanism, abstraction, praxis, and critical perspectives on technology. She has previously held research positions at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and Stanford University. A Fulbright alumna, she has published widely on literature, philosophy, and the humanities in the age of AI and has spoken at academic and industry conferences across Europe, North America, and Asia.