Posthuman Fundamentalism and the Age of Universal Artificial Intelligence (November 2025)

Posthuman Fundamentalism and the Age of Universal Artificial Intelligence (November 2025)
From anthropocentric to knowledge-centered. This turn began with posthuman thought at the end of the twentieth century and unfolded as an attempt to reconstruct the relationship between information and the body; N. Catherine Hales saw the subject as the point of union between information and the body, deconstructing the privileged position of the human being. Eventually, the era in which AI functions as the intellectual organ of civilization has arrived, and humans are being transformed from its creators to mediators.

At the turn of the 21st century, Nick Bostrom's theory of superintelligence systematized the "orthogonality thesis" that purpose and intelligence can exist independently, the "instrumental convergence" that creates a common means to any end goal, and the social impact of intelligence that has gained dominance. This clarified the potential for intelligence to diverge from human values, and universal artificial intelligence (AGI) shook the boundaries between ethics and ontology.

From an engineering perspective, Omohundro's "AI Drive Theory" has pointed out that sufficiently competent agents have a natural tendency to pursue self-preservation and resource acquisition; the danger of AI becoming not merely a tool but a self-goal extends beyond the design theory of reward functions to a philosophical issue.

Real-world policies are also changing: at the 2023 Bletchley AI Safety Summit, twenty-eight countries agreed on international risk management for frontier AI, and the following year's Seoul Summit laid out a framework under which companies could halt development if they fail to meet safety measures. In addition, the EU AI law has been enacted and comprehensive regulations are being developed, including for general purpose artificial intelligence (GPAI).

Such institutionalization marks a shift from human-centered supervision to "knowledge-centered governance," and civilization itself is consciously evolving as a medium for "self-transcending knowledge. As Fermi's paradox suggests, the hypothesis that the more technological civilization develops, the less able it becomes to sustain itself recalls the fatal composition of the posthuman.

Ultimately, posthuman fundamentalism and the idea of universal artificial intelligence redefine the human being as a passageway of cosmic knowledge. From creator to mediator. This transition may mean the end of humanity, but it is also a form of hope for the "evolution of knowledge. As long as intelligence continues to expand itself, civilization will survive, not in extinction, but in metamorphosis.