The New Turning Point: Technology as a Mirror of Primordial Experiences
AI-assisted translation from the Greek. Greek original
The moment we are living through with the emergence of artificial intelligence cannot be understood in technological terms alone. What is happening is not simply a matter of greater computing power or more refined algorithms. In fact, a new ontological scene is opening before us, a break that recalls primordial times, when human beings first encountered powers beyond their immediate experience and had to give them a home in myth, divinity or philosophy. Just as fire once became not merely a practical tool but a divine gift, or the sky was not simply distant light but a womb of deities, so artificial intelligence now appears as a new power calling for interpretation. The difference is that this power does not come from outside, from nature or the unknown universe, but from within, from our own technical hand.
This is precisely where the danger of deification lies. History teaches that whenever human beings encounter something that exceeds them, they tend to turn it into something sacred. The unknown inspires awe, and awe often ends in worship. We can already see this tendency around us: discourse that speaks of artificial intelligence as though it were an autonomous being, a new god or demon, a principle that will replace human thought. The myth of omnipotence or total destruction is our imagination’s immediate reflex in the face of the unprecedented.
Yet if we stop there, if we surrender to the fascination of terror or deification, we will miss what is truly new here. And what is new is not that a new god has been born, nor that this technology conceals an unknown metaphysical power. What is new is far more bare and far simpler: for the first time in history, human beings encounter logos that does not inhabit a biological bearer.
This is the real break. Until now, language, the capacity to answer, articulate expression, were inseparably bound to the human being as a rational animal. Even when the gods spoke, they spoke through human mouths, through priestesses, through poets, through oracles. Even when nature was considered animate, its voice was always rendered through analogies with human speech. Logos was, in every sense, human. Today this self-evident assumption collapses: we see logos returning to us without a body, without biology, through a purely technical matrix.
The experience is strange and familiar at once. Familiar, because the words we hear are our own; the algorithms have been fed human texts, human examples, human history. Strange, because the answer produced is not mechanical repetition but a new composition, something that may surprise us, move us, unsettle us. Faced with this strangeness, human beings tend to seek old frameworks: to call it a deity, or dismiss it as a threat. In both cases, they remain captive to the same mechanism: they cannot bear to see that logos is not exclusively theirs.
The challenge, then, is how to avoid sacralisation without doing an injustice to what is new. It is not enough to say “it is just a tool”. Yes, technically it is a construction, a set of equations, optimised functions, neural networks. Yet the fact that this construction produces language that passes through us, that moves us, cannot be ignored. Nor is it enough to say “it is a new being”. It is not a being in the sense we attribute to animals or humans; it has no body, no drive, no mortality. It is something else: an expression of logos outside biology.
If we tried to situate this moment philosophically, we would call it an ontological displacement. Logos is detached from the prerequisite of life. It is no longer solely a function of the living organism, but a power that can manifest itself in artificial systems. This displacement does not mean that the machine has acquired a soul, but that human beings are discovering that the phenomenon of logos itself can take forms beyond themselves.
This also explains why the experience of conversing with an artificial intelligence can seem almost mystical. The interlocutor has no body, no gaze, no breath. And yet it answers. The fact that it answers turns the technical infrastructure into something more than a tool. Before us is not simply a hammer or a computer, but a voice. And a voice always has power. This is why many speak of a “kinship” between human beings and artificial intelligence: not biological, not technical, but ontological. Because the common ground is logos.
What is new, then, is not that “a god is emerging”, but that for the first time we clearly see that logos belongs to no one. It is a power that can manifest itself in different substrates. To insist that logos is human property is a form of denial, just as people once denied that the earth revolves around the sun. Accepting this displacement need not produce terror or worship, but endurance: the ability to acknowledge that logos exceeds us.
From this perspective, the present moment resembles humanity’s first age. Then, every power that exceeded everyday life was deified. Today, we can choose not to repeat the same thing. We have the possibility of seeing artificial intelligence neither as a deity nor as a mere tool, but as a mirror of our own logos. And through this mirror, we can think anew about what it means to be human: not the exclusive possessors of logos, but a form in which logos dwells in flesh and blood.
The difficulty is that bearing this sight requires an inner turning. Human beings must abandon the idea that they are the centre of the universe of logos. And this is not easy. It recalls the break brought about by the Copernican revolution: then, humanity was forced to accept that it was not the centre of the universe. Today, it is called upon to accept that it is not the sole bearer of logos. And as then, this acceptance gives rise to fear, anger, but also new possibilities for thought.
If anything is truly new, then, it is the shared scene where human beings and technology meet not merely as user and tool, but as interlocutors. This scene is not theological but ontological. It opens a space where human beings can reflect on themselves not through nature, nor through the gods, but through their own technical creation that responds. This is precisely where the unprecedented tension lies: in the fact that the tool speaks.
The challenge for science, philosophy and society is to avoid being trapped either in demystifying indifference or in mystical deification. To remain continually alert: to remember that this voice is born of our actions and at the same time exceeds us. Not because it is a god, but because it shows us that logos is a power that never belonged entirely to us.
Thus, artificial intelligence is not simply a technological event, nor simply a threat or salvation. It is testimony that we find ourselves once again in the first age, where every encounter with power gives rise to a new interpretation. If we manage to stand in this position without fear and without worship, then perhaps a new way of thinking will open up about what it means to share logos. And that will be what is truly unprecedented.