Günther Anders: The Philosopher Who Saw the AI End-Times Coming
Günther Anders, the Philosopher at the End of the World
Long before today's AI doomers, Günther Anders warned that our technological powers outstrip our moral imagination. He called this the 'Promethean gap'—the growing asynchronicity between what we can do and what we can conceive. From Hiroshima to the death camps, he saw how routine calculation enables mass atrocity. His question—how to bring self-knowledge up to the level of our monstrous powers—resonates anew as frontier labs warn of existential risk.
The mass exterminations under Hitler could be carried out because they absolutely transcended the moral imagination of the agents, thereby making possible a new, truly infernal innocence.