The armor and the machine: notes on substitution.

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the problem of the potential substitution or replacement of the human being by the technology of automation. The debate, as old as modernity, has suffered a surprising boost in the last three years due to the appearance in the public sphere of probabilistic algorithms that produce texts or images: the so-called generative AI. In a context of sensationalist discourses dragged by alarmism or utopianism promoted by the commercial strategies of the «big tech», the present work proposes to critically think about the terms of the problem, delving into what is ontologically and politically at stake in this supposed substitution. This article proposes that the problem can be adequately refocused if it is understood that at the origin of the modern subject does not lie any distinctively human quality, but rather the emptiness of a tropological movement of (self)subtraction always in progress.