Omniscient Optimization and the Erosion of Meaning An Ontological Critique of AGI Technological Paternalism

Current debates on artificial general intelligence usually focus on safety, control, value alignment, and existential risk. This paper argues that an equally fundamental but less visible problem arises when AGI harms human meaning not through hostility, but through benevolent optimization. This paper calls this scenario "omniscient AGI technological paternalism": a system that predicts, recommends, structures, and safeguards human life in the name of human welfare. Through conceptual analysis and thought experiments, the paper distinguishes subjective feelings of meaning from meaning as a practical structure relating agency, consequence, world, and temporal self-formation. It then identifies three structural conditions of existential meaning: process, confrontation, and subjectivity. The threat of AGI paternalism lies not simply in eliminating suffering, but in transforming difficulties into designed levels, failures into controlled failures, and choices into selections within an optimized space. Human life may become safer and more efficient, yet lose the ontological weight of self-formation. The paper responds to three objections: moderate AGI, voluntary delegation, and the possible neuro-technological reconstruction of meaning. Finally, it proposes three principles for "meaning-friendly AGI": preservation of uncertainty, non-substitution, and real consequences. The ethical task of AGI is not to complete human life on our behalf, but to protect the conditions under which human beings can still become themselves through choice, risk, and responsibility.