Recently, there have been more and more conspiracy theorists claiming that Joe Biden has been replaced by AI. All the pictures and videos of Biden are deepfakes, doctored by the global elite.

Biden even joked “I’m the AI” at an event on that very topic. I’m interested not only in the doubt that has been sown into society by genAI, but most importantly, the associated intuitions that characterize dehumanization.

To claim someone is computer generated or an AI implies them as lesser. In an ontological sense, compared to a real human, AI is fake and inauthentic. It is fake because it is incapable of the full range of human actions. It is inauthentic because it has no concern for truth or falsehood. In other words, LLMs like ChatGPT are great at bullshitting.

Let’s go back to Biden. To those conspiracy theorists, he is not afforded the same respect and dignity given to other entities which we perceive to be human. Some may see attributions of technology as a compliment (I.e this person is a machine, as smart as AI), but the negative interpretation is that this person is not human.

We lose something in AI. The technocratic utopias envisioned by some in Silicon Valley would be depersonalized and cold. I would not want to go to a coffee shop solely operated by robots. I likewise would not want a president who is a robot.

The human being resists quantification. We do not even know how our own consciousness works (Therefore, I am not worried at all about AI gaining consciousness). We have a degree of unfinalizability, to borrow a term from Bakhtin. As we are always changing, we can never be finalized.

AI can be finalized however, as it is mere software and hardware. Anything beyond that is illusory, including the graphical interfaces which display the text which makes ChatGPT seem so lifelike.

Biden is most definitely not “the AI”. To say so deprives him of his humanity and the basic rights and privileges we associate with human beings.