
This paper argues that artificial intelligence does not cause contemporary civilizational crises but functions as an ontological exposure device that reveals the limits of a survival-based, substantialist understanding of existence. By externalizing and surpassing human capacities for instrumental reasoning, optimization, and predictive control, AI makes explicit the criteria upon which modern civilization has implicitly grounded human value. The paper shows that the social, political, and existential destabilizations associated with AI are not technological disruptions but ontological disclosures. Attempts to regulate or restrain AI without addressing the underlying conception of existence therefore misdiagnose the problem and merely defer confrontation with a deeper structural limit. This paper is the third theoretical contribution in a series initiated by the overview DOIː 10.5281/zenodo.18193256 “Rationality Without Transition: Why Advanced Civilizations Remain Trapped in an Animalistic Mode of Survival”. It builds on prior papers defining generative and relational existence and explaining why separated existence historically appeared safe, by demonstrating how AI exposes the exhaustion of that ontological framework.
Survival-Based Civilization, Technological Revelation, Artificial Intelligence, Civilizational Crisis, Ontological Transition, Instrumental Rationality, Post-Functional Existence, Substantialist Ontology, Ontological Exposure, Existential Destabilization
Survival-Based Civilization, Technological Revelation, Artificial Intelligence, Civilizational Crisis, Ontological Transition, Instrumental Rationality, Post-Functional Existence, Substantialist Ontology, Ontological Exposure, Existential Destabilization
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 0 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
