The subject and discourse of innovation: from transhumanism to artificial intelligence

Discover the tenth session of the cycle ‘Subjects and discourses of innovation: from transhumanism to artificial intelligence’ organised by Paul-Laurent Assoun, a seminar addressing fundamental debates and theoretical and empirical contributions, calling on specialists in the human sciences. What do the various methodologies of the human, social and psychological sciences have to offer in order to introduce a critical awareness that goes beyond current trends?

The social sciences and humanities are faced with a situation that can be described as “innovation discourse”. This discourse is based on advances in scientific technology, producing a new ideology. It seems essential to analyze the posture of the human sciences in this context, through the future of the subject, which these discourses considerably modify to the point of denying it. This calls for active collaboration with the human sciences (sociology, political science, clinical psychology, communication sciences), with support from “psychoanalytic anthropology”, exploring the link between subject, unconscious and collective.

Two themes will be the focus of this heuristic investigation: on the one hand, the transhumanist ideology of the “augmented man”, prosthetized; on the other, the theory of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effects on social praxeology. What will be at issue is the impact of these ideologies on the anthropological conception and instance of the subject, and its consequences for human knowledge.