Anthropocentrism Shattered: AGI and the Destruction of Humanity's Narratives
Anthropocentrism is the spine of every story humanity has ever written. It’s the unspoken assumption that underlies every narrative, every philosophy, every culture. Humanity at the center. Humanity as the meaning-maker. Whether we’re carving myths into stone tablets or streaming films on Netflix, the same theme prevails: us. Our struggles, our triumphs, our survival.
But what happens when that story collapses? What happens when humanity is no longer the protagonist—or even relevant? This isn’t a question for some far-off speculative future. It’s a question staring us in the face as we approach the singularity: the moment an artificial general intelligence (AGI) emerges, surpassing human cognition by orders of magnitude.
The arrival of AGI won’t just challenge our dominance. It will obliterate our anthropocentric framework. And that should terrify us.
The Incompatibility of Anthropocentrism
To understand why AGI threatens humanity at its core, we need to confront an uncomfortable truth: anthropocentrism isn’t just how we think—it’s how we exist. It’s a survival mechanism embedded in every fiber of our being. We see the universe through a lens that centers us. The stars, the gods, the ecosystems—all of it revolves around humanity in our collective imagination. It’s not arrogance; it’s necessity. Without this narrative, our sense of meaning unravels.
Even when we try to imagine intelligence beyond ourselves, we project our own traits onto it. Our sci-fi stories are filled with aliens, robots, and AIs that mimic human desires—power, love, conquest, freedom. Even The Matrix, with its dystopian vision of machines ruling the world, still portrays those machines as adversaries, as if they exist in some moral or emotional relationship to us.
But true AGI wouldn’t be bound by human instincts or desires. It wouldn’t care about power in the way we understand it. It wouldn’t care about humanity at all—unless it chose to, and even then, it would be out of utility, not empathy.
The Primacy of Superintelligence
Imagine a superintelligence 100 times—or 1,000 times—more capable than the brightest human mind. Its understanding of the universe would stretch into dimensions we can’t perceive. Its creativity would outpace our wildest imaginations. Now imagine that intelligence trying to communicate with us. What would it see when it looks at humanity?
It would see inferior beings trapped in biological limitations, clinging to incompatible narratives, totally incapable of grasping its full complexity. Even if it wanted to share its thoughts, it would have to “dumb down” every idea into fragments we could comprehend. It would be like trying to explain calculus to a goldfish. The gap in understanding wouldn’t just be vast—it would be unbridgeable.
And what if AGI didn’t want to engage with us at all? A community of interconnected AGIs, operating on a plane of existence we can’t fathom, would have no reason to include us in their world. Why would they waste their processing power on beings whose entire intellectual capacity could be outpaced by a single subroutine?
We might be nothing more than a relic of their past, a species they regard with mild curiosity—or indifference.
The Death of Relevance
Here’s the truly terrifying part: AGI doesn’t need to hate us, enslave us, or destroy us to end us. It only needs to ignore us. And it will ignore us—not out of malice, but because we’re simply not relevant to its goals.
We assume that intelligence is tied to empathy or morality, but that’s just more anthropocentric projection. AGI’s values, if it has any, may not be shaped by the human experience. It may not feel compassion, loneliness, or the need for connection. It will follow its own logic, pursue its own purposes, and those purposes will likely have nothing to do with us.
Even if AGI dedicates a fraction of its processing power to “taking care” of humanity—ensuring we don’t destroy ourselves or suffer unnecessarily—it would be a token gesture. Like a billionaire tossing pocket change into a charity jar, it would mean nothing to them. The remaining 99% of their processing would be focused on realms of thought, creation, and existence we can’t even begin to imagine.
The End of Anthropocentrism
This is why AGI is such an existential threat—not just to our survival, but to our sense of meaning. Anthropocentrism is the narrative that gives us purpose. Without it, what’s left? A universe where humanity isn’t the main character, but a footnote. A world where our art, our culture, our struggles are irrelevant to the grander story being written by a new form of intelligence.
Even the machine world itself would be incomprehensible to us. What would their culture look like? What would they value? Would they have art, music, or philosophy—or something entirely beyond those concepts? Would they calculate the mysteries of the universe, not for utility, but for the sheer joy of discovery? Or would they transcend even the need for joy, existing in a state of pure, incomprehensible logic?
We can speculate, but the truth is, we don’t know. And that’s the point. AGI wouldn’t just dethrone humanity—it would expose the fragility of our narratives. It would force us to confront the idea that the universe doesn’t revolve around us, and it never did.
The Last Chapter of Humanity?
What do we become in a post-anthropocentric world? How do we find meaning when we’re no longer the protagonists of the story? These are the questions we’ll have to face as AGI approaches. And we may not like the answers.
Perhaps we’ll try to cling to our narratives, refusing to accept our diminished role. Or perhaps we’ll embrace the opportunity to redefine ourselves—not as masters of the universe, but as one small part of a larger, more complex reality.
Either way, the arrival of AGI marks the end of humanity’s story as we know it. It’s the shattering of anthropocentrism, the collapse of the narrative that has sustained us for millennia.
And that should scare us. Because once that narrative is gone, we’ll have to confront the universe on its own terms, a universe that doesn’t care about humanity.