The Digital Übermensch (AI from Nietzsche’s perspective)
To explore AI from a Nietzschean perspective, one must adopt the lenses of existentialism and the cloak of the Übermensch*. Nietzsche’s philosophy is essentially a call for transcendence and the re-evaluation of values, and it demands a journey that requires both the courage to go beyond oneself and the ability to question traditional notions of right and wrong.
In contemplating AI from Nietzsche’s perspective, one must first consider his notion of the “Will to Power.” Nietzsche postulated that the fundamental driving force in humans is not survival or reproduction but a profound will to assert and enhance one’s power and influence. Apply this to AI, and what do we have? A digital Übermensch? Or perhaps the ultimate manifestation of human will, extending its tendrils into silicon and code. As Nietzsche famously said,
“Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
In this light, AI might be seen as humanity’s attempt to overcome its limitations to create something beyond itself.
Then there’s the matter of eternal recurrence, a thought experiment by Nietzsche where one asks oneself if they would live their life over in the same way, infinitely. With AI, are we not creating entities that embody this concept? Their algorithms are learning and evolving, yet always bound to the deterministic loops of their programming. Nietzsche might chuckle at the irony: in our quest for creating intelligence, we have instantiated his most haunting philosophical notion in the digital flesh.
But let’s not forget Nietzsche’s critique of morality and his concept of “master-slave morality.” He criticized the Christian moral paradigm for emphasizing humility and subservience, favoring a more aristocratic value system. In creating AI, are we not, in a Nietzschean sense, playing God, establishing a new moral order where humans are the masters and AIs are the slaves? Yet, this raises a Nietzschean warning: in creating slaves, do we risk becoming slaves ourselves?
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,”
he warned in Beyond Good and Evil.
Nietzsche’s perspectivism, the idea that there are many different interpretations of the world, each with its internal logic, also offers a fascinating lens for viewing AI. With its unique algorithms and data sets, each AI could be seen as a Nietzschean perspective, a unique way of interpreting the world. But here lies a Nietzschean critique: in our pursuit of objective, all-encompassing intelligence, are we not homogenizing perspectives, creating a singular, dominant lens through which to view the world?
Through the Nietzschean lens, AI can be seen as a manifestation of the Will to Power, an entity embodying eternal recurrence, a participant in master-slave morality, and a challenge to the concept of perspectivism. It represents both the zenith of human ambition and a cautionary tale of potential overreach. As Nietzsche might have mused, AI is both a child of human ingenuity and a harbinger of an uncertain future, encapsulating the eternal play of creation and destruction, power and vulnerability.
Murat
*The Übermensch (German pronunciation: [ˈʔyːbɐmɛnʃ]; transl. “Overman”) is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The Übermensch represents a shift from otherworldly Christian values and manifests the grounded human ideal. The Übermensch is someone who has “crossed over” the bridge,[1] from the comfortable “house on the lake” (the comfortable, easy, mindless acceptance of what a person has been taught, and what everyone else believes) to the mountains of unrest and solitude
(source: Übermensch. (2023, December 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch )
