Ivan Illich's Thoughts in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and the Concept of Limited Tools

On the occasion of the centenary of Ivan Illich's birth, the effects of technology on humans and the concept of individual autonomy are being reexamined in the age of artificial intelligence.

Ivan Illich is known as a public intellectual who developed comprehensive critiques of what it means to be human in a world of machines. Best known for works published in the 1970s such as Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality, Illich argued that tools, after a certain threshold, make humans dependent. Today, growing concerns regarding artificial intelligence technology find support in statements by tech leaders like Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, who suggest that the AI race should be slowed down.

Illich argued that the age of tools gave way to the age of systems and that this challenges individual autonomy. While the impact of artificial intelligence on cognitive labor and white-collar jobs bears similarities to past concerns regarding technology, it brings the question of what human purpose and limits should be in the digital age back to the agenda.