Making sense of the ‘Human’ in human-centered AI: an Arendtian perspective

In recent years, ‘human-centered artificial intelligence’ (HCAI) has emerged as a prominent framing device in the societal debate on the implications of AI. By adopting this phrase, AI ethics discourses make an appeal to the notion of the ‘human,’ while failing to critically reflect on its meaning. Against this background, we pose the question as to what ‘human’ is taken to mean in the context of HCAI. We apply a critical hermeneutic approach to analyze prominent HCAI literature and identify five key characteristics that shape the meaning given to the concept of the ‘human’ in HCAI: universalism, individualism, instrumentalism, psychologism, and exceptionalism. Following this, we introduce Hannah Arendt’s philosophical anthropology to provide an understanding of human existence as essentially political life, and argue that the HCAI discourse would benefit from considering the political dimension of human existence. We conclude the paper by proposing a research program for developing a reconceptualization of HCAI informed by philosophical anthropology.