WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT A SUBJECT
ŽIŽEK GOADS AND PRODS
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Bonus Obscenities<br>WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT A SUBJECT<br>The AI machine itself is experienced as a maternal superego which addresses us with an injunction to enjoy
Slavoj Žižek<br>May 30, 2026
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Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash<br>Dear Comrades,<br>What follows is the talk that I delivered on May 22 at the conference “Comprehension and Knowledge,” organized in Munich by Dominik Finkelde at the Hochschule für Philosophie. Since the talk includes a lot of material that I have already used in other texts, it seems only fair that it be available for free to readers.
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In order to understand the impact of Artificial Intelligence on its users, we should begin with a reference to Hegel, first clarifying what Hegel’s basic operation is. As a rule, Hegel is misread in a Fichtean-Marxist way: a subject (Fichte’s absolute I or Marx’s collective subject) posits/produces some objective content (Fichte’s non-I, Marx’s alienated social substance), and the subject can and should overcome this alienation by way of recognizing this substance as its own product and thus re-appropriating it. Is it not similar with AI? It is a product of collective human output which appears to us as an autonomous agent that exerts power over us, and the obvious solution is that we should recognize in it our own product and thus put it under our own control. My claim is that such a reading of Hegel is wrong and deeply misleading: the subject itself only emerges through the process of alienation, and in the state of alienation the AI universe appears to it as a big Other which fully dominates the social universe. However, what happens in the move beyond alienation is not that the social subject somehow appropriates the alienated digital substance, making it serve humanity’s needs. As Lacan put it, alienation is followed by separation: not the separation between subject and its alienated digital Other but the separation immanent to this Other itself, the separation which makes this Other antagonistic, inconsistent, failed. Yes, the subject recognizes itself in the alienated Other, but not by way of appropriating it – the subject recognizes itself in the constitutive cracks and gaps of the digital Other; its place in the digital Other is that of the lack in the Other.<br>When we talk about subject in AI, this topic has two aspects: is or can an AI agent act like a subject, and do we (humans who interact with an AI agent) remain subjects when we are totally immersed into AI. The TV series Pluribus confronts us with both aspects. It follows the Albuquerque author Carol Sturka, one of only 13 people in the world immune to the effects of the “Joining,” an event in which an extraterrestrial virus transformed the rest of humanity into a peaceful and content hive mind known as the “Others.” “Others” are not the Lacanian big Other – the latter is not a set of firm rules but the space for ambiguities, innuendos, hysterical provocations, the very space in which individual idiosyncrasies can thrive, plus it is an order of appearances, a virtual order which exists only insofar as the subjects caught in it act as if they believe in it. “We” obviously does not function like that: it is grounded in the Real since it is a virus transmitted by stem cells. However, the “Others” do have an Other: the mind which sent the virus to the earth and pre-programmed how “We” (they should help humans, not coerce them, not kill them and not lie to them). This Other of the Others is non-transparent to the Others themselves – in short, it seems they are addressing their Other with the question: “What do you want from us?”<br>This is why “They” are not a happy warm community which wants the best for all humans, those who joined it and those who did not join it. The most depressing scene in the entire series is for me when Zosia shows Carol the big dormitory where Others sleep, a large sports hall with hundreds of simple flat cushions where they lie side by side, and allows her to spend the night there: since they share the same mind, they do not communicate and ignore each other. Moreover, how (if at all) do they multiply? Do they have sex? Again, if they share the same mind, where is the flirting and enjoying the proximity of their partner? Here the key role is played by one of the unjoined, the hedonistic Koumba Diabaté, an African who, without joining the Others, fully enjoys their favors – luxury life, including multiple sexual partners – but simultaneously engages with Them in something like authentic communication. They confide in him that they are half-starving since they are not allowed to kill any living being, so that, to get organic food, they have to process parts of the naturally deceased humans into a special drink, plus that they put all their effort into constructing a giant machine that will be sending rays with the virus to further planets to...