Kant Machine

Yuk Hui is Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. Hui studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong and philosophy at Goldsmiths College in London, where he wrote his doctoral thesis under the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020). He obtained his Habilitation (venia legendi in philosophy of technology) from the Leuphana University Lüneburg. Hui is a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020, and convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology since 2014. His books include Post-Europe (2024), Machine and Sovereignty (2024), Art and Cosmotechnics (2021), and Recursivity and Contingency (2019).

The growing debates around machines, intelligence, machine-intelligence and the future of the human provoked by AI show that public demand for philosophy is reaching unprecedented levels of urgency. Yuk Hui's Kant Machine goes far in meeting these demands, offering an eloquent and reasoned reflection on the origins and futures of AI. More than this, and given the surprising influence of Kant on many of the key protagonists in the development of AI, Hui offers a sharply critical assessment of the Kant Machine, charting a course between the utopias and dystopias of AI. This book offers a timely challenge to the assumptions informing the current debate and invites a new and more sophisticated approach to the understanding and critique of AI.

• PrefaceChapter One: Intelligent Machinea. Cartesian Machine versus Humean Machineb. Genesis of the Kantian Machinec. Kant Among the CyberneticiansChapter Two: Moral Machined. AI Alignment and Moral Normse. Kantian Moral Machinef. The Moral, the Beautiful and the TechnologicalChapter Three: Peace Machineg. Conflict of the Universalsh. Algorithm of Perpetual Peacei. Islands, Shores and ShipsBibliographyIndex