Subjectivity and Artificial Intelligence, their ambiguities and paradoxes: A reading from Lacanian psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article presents the insights into Artificial Intelligence (AI) that have emerged in philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis in recent years, from phenomena such as the launch of ChatGPT It argues that AI reflects fears inherent to the human psychic makeup, as explained by psychoanalysis. It exposes the paradoxes and impasses that projects such as Blue Brain and Neuralink, which represent attempts to overcome the limitations of the human mind, entail. Along the same lines, it addresses AI as an attempt to overcome these limitations, arguing that, on the contrary, AI is incapable of overcoming them, on the one hand, and, on the other, is incapable of fully emulating the functioning of the human mind. The article closely follows the discussions developed by some philosophers and representatives of Lacanian psychoanalysis based on the categories specific to that field. 

Finally, it concludes that these disciplines shed light to the extent that they lead to questioning traditional notions of what it means to think and know reality.