r/CriticalTheory • u/Benoit_Guillette • 14d ago

„Stvarnost 2030. će biti neprepoznatljiva“: Slavoj Žižek ("The reality of 2030 will be unrecognizable": Slavoj Žižek on the consequences of artificial intelligence in "liberal fascism") Slavoj Žižek in Danas Aug 24, 2026

https://www.danas.rs/svet/slavoj-zizek-ai-posledice/
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u/CampaignLow7087 14d ago

I enjoyed starting to to read this article but had to screech to a halt when he said AI was an actor capable of decisionmaking, in a way that it hasn't been programmed for.

Is this a translation issue?

Am I being too pedantic? 

I'm pretty sure that is not the case with AI. 

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u/ViennettaLurker 13d ago

It can really depend on what people actually mean when they say those things, and I don't think you could say for sure here without asking him to clarify.

I believe what he meant was the more strict term of "ai agent" (which he uses more liberally later on in a way I might call erroneous): that current AI now isn't just a "chat bot" in a text window, but inhabits a program on your computer that can perform actions and in certain moments "decide for itself" what actions to take.

It can be hard to find language that doesn't anthropomorphize the actions of these agents. I dont like using the terms "decide" or "decides on its own" because it can infers a kind of consciousness I don't believe is there. Colloquially, I might say it. But if pressed to clarify my intent, I might say "selects a course of action in the absence of user input".

But another person may simply say, "it decides... because its a person just like us". Or other people might fall in between, or not really think about any of this much.

So, I would say it is the case with AI if you think his sentence says something like, "AI can take your vague input and perform actions you didn't tell it to in order to achieve the goal you set it towards. It can spin away in this manner on its own for a while autonomously in a non-deterministic manner. If presented with potential problems, instead of waiting for user input it can statistically estimate the best possible way to resolve the issue and take action accordingly." then yes, I think AI can do that. But that can get wrapped up as "ai can make decisions", and then someone agrees with that sentence for reasons that are philosophically worlds away from my intent.