Journal of Cyberspace Studies

Journal of Cyberspace Studies

Generative AI and the ontological inversion of the self

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original article

Author
Ebrahim Mohseni Ahooei
PhD in Communications and New Media Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
10.22059/jcss.2026.413106.1246
Abstract
Background: The rapid advance of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is unsettling long-standing metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the Self. Capacities once taken to be uniquely human— such as language, creativity, and reflective thought— are now enacted by machines, forcing philosophy to confront an inversion in which the Self no longer appears as an autonomous, originating subject but as a phenomenon refracted through technological mediation.
Aims: This paper examines four broad conservative responses to this disruption—residual, integrationist, relational, and hierarchical—and argues that each proves insufficient when measured against the scale of the ontological shift. The article proposes instead that the Self be re-imagined as an emergent and distributed process, constituted through assemblages of human and machine, rather than as a fixed metaphysical foundation. The aim is to sketch the limits of inherited categories and to point towards the contours of a genuinely post-singular metaphysics.
Methodology: This paper employs a critical-theoretical, assemblage-informed philosophical methodology that integrates conceptual synthesis across process ontology, philosophy of technology, and posthumanist theory. It conducts a structured comparative critique of dominant interpretive stances on the Self, using theoretical deconstruction to diagnose their insufficiency under conditions of generative AI-mediated cognition.
Findings: The analysis demonstrates that generative AI destabilises inherited conceptions of subjectivity by reconfiguring cognition as a distributed, socio-technical process. This inversion exposes the inadequacy of conservative frameworks and highlights the emergence of hybrid agency within human–machine assemblages across epistemic and ethical domains.
Conclusion: The paper concludes that generative AI precipitates a fundamental ontological inversion in which the Self is displaced from autonomous subject to distributed, technologically co-constituted process. Conservative metaphysical frameworks fail to accommodate this shift, necessitating a post-singular, assemblage-based reconceptualisation of subjectivity, agency, and consciousness.
Keywords
generative AI
ontological inversion
self
singularity
Subjects

Main Object: Computer Science & Technology, Ontology

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Journal of Cyberspace Studies

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 21 July 2026

  • Receive Date 21 April 2026
  • Revise Date 05 May 2026
  • Accept Date 06 May 2026
  • First Publish Date 21 July 2026
  • Publish Date 21 July 2026