Artificial Intelligence and the erosion of community ties: A philosophical reading based on the thought of Byung-Chul Han

Abstract

This article offers a critical reading, from the philosophical perspective of Byung-Chul Han, of the major repercussions that AI and digitalization have generated in the way of life of the individual in late modernity. In this regard, Han warns that digitalization not only optimizes processes but also contributes to promoting a regime of positivity that excludes the constitutive negativity of the human being.

With this aim, the article is organized around three thematic cores. First, it examines the hollowing out of the subject, understood as the loss of reflective interiority, affective sensitivity, and the capacity to generate meaning. Second, it analyzes the erosion of community, which is displaced by forms of digital interconnection that, far from fostering symbolic relations and belonging, produce a fragmented and self-referential collectivity lacking density and a shared narrative. Finally, the article considers the possibility of an ethical reappropriation of humanitas, grounded in practices that resist the technocratic paradigm, such as silence, delay, idleness, contemplation, festivity, and religion. These experiences, marginalized by the logic of performance and transparency, open the prospect of an alternative horizon for human existence, one that restores alterity, mystery, and the symbolic depth of shared life.