On the Ontology of ‘Auto’ and ‘Ipse’ and the Inevitability of AI : Focusing on Heidegger’s Philosophy of Technology

This paper aims to analyze the emergence of AI, focusing on Heidegger's philosophy of technology, not as a mere result of technological advancement, but as a way in which Being reveals its ‘self’ (auto, ipse). Ancient techné corresponds to the introduction of Heidegger's philosophy of technology and can be summarized as ‘Entbergen’. However, since the modern era, techné has become closely tied to the state of the world as a controllable ‘resource’ upon encountering Cartesian subjectivity. AI is inevitably understood as a device created mathematically and probabilistically at the end of this trajectory. Yet, rethinking this, it is more consistent with a philosophical perspective on technology to instead describe it as a form of digital automation that reveals the essence of modern technology. Here, the relationship between the ‘self’ (auto) of automation and the ‘self’ (ipse) and identity (idem) can be naturally derived into a narrative subjectivity. This process enables the limits and new roles of the world revealed by AI technology to be re-examined through philosophical effort, amidst the extreme instability of modern society that leads to mistaking technology's coerciveness for the ‘sole truth’. Thus, the philosophy of technology becomes closely connected to so-called ‘narrative identity’, which re-questions the relationship between being and the world in its own language. Consequently, the philosophy of technology in the AI era enables us to reinterpret and redefine the world through everyday language and narrative composition, thereby providing insight into the inevitability that human-specific ‘In-der-Welt-Sein’ must be constituted through one's own narrative.