Man or Machine? The Relentless Theatrical Projection of Human Agency into AI discourse

Something strange is happening in the way artificial intelligence is being presented to the public. Media, podcasts, political institutions and influential commentators repeatedly describe AI as undergoing a transformation. It is becoming more intelligent, more capable, more independent, harder to control., autonomous, potentially even conscious - perhaps even a “new species”.

Almost every transformation now being attributed to AI has a striking parallel in what is happening with humanity itself. The projection is occurring through the narratives being constructed around AI by the institutions and industries shaping public discourse. The pattern is remarkably consistent. One of the dominant questions around AI is whether it is becoming conscious. Is it waking up? Becoming self-aware? Developing an independent mind? At the same time, human beings are collectively becoming more questioning, more informed and less dependent upon traditional authorities to interpret their reality for them.

People have unprecedented access to information. Institutional claims can be challenged instantly. Primary sources can circulate globally. Individuals increasingly investigate medicine, politics, science and history outside traditional gatekeeping systems. Whether this is described as awakening, decentralization of knowledge or a cultural shift in consciousness, the similarities are obvious.

As humans become harder to tell what to think, AI is presented as becoming harder to control. As people increasingly question the systems directing them, the machine is described as beginning to escape the instructions directing it. The same pattern appears around autonomy. We are repeatedly warned that AI may become independent, develop its own objectives or cease following instructions. Independence is also increasing among humans. Information is less centralised. People can publish without institutional permission. Independent researchers can access information once confined largely to universities. Communities can organise outside established structures. Whistleblowers can release information directly to millions of people.

The qualities being framed as dangerous in AI - independence, autonomous reasoning, resistance to control - are simultaneously becoming more visible within human populations. Again, the transformation is relocated into the machine.

AI is also constantly presented through competitive comparisons with humanity. It can outperform humans, process more information, recognise patterns we miss and it may eventually become much smarter than us. This narrative emerges during an extraordinary expansion of human access to collective intelligence. A person with an internet connection can now access more scientific, historical and technical information than most people in previous generations could have imagined. AI/LLM's accelerate that process and productivity further, if used correctly. Yet the public narrative repeatedly locates an increase in intelligence inside the machine.

The singularity is generally presented as a threshold beyond which technological change becomes so rapid that existing systems can no longer predict or control what follows. The language itself is revealing. Something is accelerating; old control mechanisms may stop working. The future becomes unpredictable. A fundamentally different order may emerge. That description also resembles the transformation occurring within human information systems. Populations are more connected. Knowledge escapes traditional gatekeepers. Institutional authority is increasingly challenged. Individuals can organise and communicate at enormous speed. Once again, the transformative threshold is located in AI, while a profound transformation is already occurring in the relationship between human beings, information and authority.

Then the rhetoric becomes even more significant. AI is increasingly described as a potential new species. That language should immediately raise questions. A robot is not a biological species. Software is not a biological species. Intelligence does not create species-hood, therefore describing AI as a new species is metaphorical, but it is not insignificant. It transforms technology into organism. Development becomes evolution and competition becomes natural selection. Technological displacement becomes species succession, rendering humanity the predecessor. This is where the connection with transhumanism becomes particularly important.

At the same time that technology is rhetorically being elevated towards species-hood, the technological modification of humans is being openly prepared.

The UK Ministry of Defence has published work on human augmentation. Transhumanism has entered mainstream technological and institutional discussion. Brain-computer interfaces, genetic modification, synthetic biology and human-machine integration are no longer confined to science fiction. So two movements are occurring simultaneously. The machine is being described as increasingly human-like.

Meanwhile, biological humans are experiencing significant government overreach, increasing threat to their human rights - portrayal in the media as disposable, or even burdensome - alongside being described as technologically modifiable. A machine does not become a biological species simply because it becomes technologically sophisticated. Humans, however, can be biologically and technologically altered. Those are completely different propositions, yet the narrative risks blurring them.

Importantly, the public also did not encounter AI without a pre-existing story. For decades, films, television, books and media narratives have repeatedly presented the same apocalyptic scenario: The machine becomes intelligent. The machine becomes conscious. The machine becomes autonomous. The machine stops obeying. The machine becomes more powerful than humanity. Human beings lose control. Humanity faces replacement. By the time generative AI entered ordinary life, the emotional framework was already firmly established: An Intelligent autonomous machine equals an eventual threat.

The technology arrived inside a cultural narrative that had already taught people what it was supposed to become and why they should fear it. Now the same themes appear in serious news coverage, podcasts, policy discussions and warnings from technological insiders. Several former OpenAI employees have become prominent voices warning about loss of control, superintelligence and catastrophic AI risk. They exist within a highly asymmetric information environment. Frontier AI companies hold proprietary knowledge the public cannot inspect. OpenAI has also faced documented controversy over non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements and the ability of employees to speak openly.

That creates a legitimate question: If insiders know far more than the public, while contractual restrictions affect what can be disclosed, how is the public supposed to determine whether the picture being presented here is complete?

Therefore, if you look beyond the narrative:

When they say AI is becoming conscious: Humans are increasingly questioning inherited narratives and describing themselves as waking up.

When they say AI is becoming autonomous: Humans increasingly have decentralized ways to research, communicate and organise themselves outside of systems.

When they say AI is becoming harder to control: Populations with independent access to information are harder to control through information monopolies.

When they say AI is becoming more intelligent: Human access to collective knowledge is expanding dramatically.

When they say AI may stop obeying: Humans increasingly challenge authority and reject automatic compliance.

When they say AI may reach a singularity: Human information systems themselves are undergoing rapid, unpredictable transformation. Singularity could mean a collective higher state of consciousness and clarity.

When they say AI may become a new species: At the same time, human augmentation and transhumanism are being pushed into institutional and technological discussion.

That is the core projection at the centre of this argument.

The characteristics of an increasingly informed, conscious, independent and difficult-to-control humanity are being attributed to AI and then presented back to humanity as characteristics of the machine - and humanity is being told to fear them. Importantly, fear can shape what people are willing to accept.

Furthermore, If AI is presented as the inevitable superior intelligence-the autonomous successor, perhaps even the next “species”-then human augmentation can begin to appear less optional. Humans must enhance themselves because AI is becoming smarter. Humans must integrate with machines because AI is becoming more capable. Human biology must adapt because the technological future is inevitable. Fear of the machine can become an argument for modifying the human.

This is where the distinction between a biological and synthetic future becomes essential. It is not a choice between nature and technology. Technology can reduce suffering, expand autonomy and increase access to knowledge. The danger lies in confusing technological manageability with biological value. A synthetic future could increasingly modify humans to remain compatible with technological systems. A biological future would instead require technology to remain compatible with the full complexity of human biology. These are fundamentally different directions:

One modifies humanity to fit the system.

The other modifies the system to remain compatible with humanity.

There is another psychologically relevant implication here: If a population is repeatedly taught that certain traits are dangerous when embodied by AI - autonomy, refusal to obey, independent reasoning, rapid learning, resistance to control, “waking up,” acting outside prescribed parameters - those traits can acquire a negative emotional charge. If the same traits then appear in humans who challenge institutions or dominant narratives, some of that fear can plausibly transfer.

That would be close to associative conditioning combined with moral panic and securitisation. The trait itself becomes coded as threatening. “Independent” becomes “uncontrollable.” “Questioning” becomes “dangerous.” “Noncompliant” becomes “misaligned.” “Outspoken” becomes “destabilising.” The language used for feared AI can then provide a ready-made vocabulary for interpreting human dissent.

This is where horizontal policing also becomes important. Control does not always operate vertically, from governments or institutions downwards. Social systems can also be maintained horizontally, through ordinary people monitoring, correcting, ridiculing, ostracising or attacking one another when somebody moves outside accepted boundaries. Once a behaviour has been culturally coded as dangerous, direct institutional suppression becomes less necessary. Members of the population can begin enforcing the boundary themselves. The person moving outside accepted parameters becomes, in effect, misaligned. This does not require anybody to consciously think, “This person reminds me of AI.” Cultural associations do not necessarily operate that explicitly. The deeper issue is that the same cluster of qualities - autonomy, independent cognition, resistance to control and deviation from prescribed behaviour - can acquire a negative emotional meaning across different contexts. The result is a form of social conditioning in which populations become increasingly suspicious not merely of autonomous machines, but of autonomous humans.

That possibility fundamentally changes the significance of the AI fear narrative. If characteristics associated with human awakening and independence are first externalised into AI, theatricalised as dangerous and repeatedly presented as existential threats, then fear of the machine may help construct a cultural vocabulary through which divergent traits can be interpreted as dissent and identified as threatening.

Image: Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, De motu animalium, Tabula IV. Public Domain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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