The subject of intelligence: AI as existential risk and the government of the human and the future

Abstract This article analyses discourses on artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of existential risk studies. AI appears as a key theme in existential risk circles, not only as a source of risk, but also as a resource for risk prevention and as the enabler of a glorious future for humanity. However, what is it about AI that brings together utopian and dystopian imaginaries? Why is a discourse on AI so tied to questions regarding the human, and what forms of humanity does it produce? What forms of governing does it enable? This article argues that the concept of ‘intelligence’ is fundamental regarding both how AI is construed as an existential risk, as well as how humanity is conceptualised as that which needs to be protected. Existential risk discourses on AI appear as a governmental rationality which reproduces exclusionary conceptions of humanity, as intelligence is mobilised as grounds for teleological conceptions of history and technological development, utilitarian ethics, and concerns for the long-term future. Consequently, existential risk prevention appears as a governmentality that mobilises uncertainty and the future of intelligence as ethical grounds for disciplining the concept of humanity and governing populations in the present.