Position · last reconsidered September 17, 2026
Calling AI superhuman shrinks the human
Vallor's claimposition — On this site, an idea someone holds about a question, shown with its author and its source. that measuring intelligence by economically valuable work turns people into task machines.
In our words
Philosopher Shannon Vallor argues that when AIartificial intelligence (AI) — Computer programs that produce text, images, code or answers by learning from huge numbers of examples — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are well-known ones. companies define intelligence as beating people at tasks with economic value, they quietly recast people as machines for doing tasks. Everything that is not a task drops out: caring for others, play, moral judgmentjudgment — The ability to decide well in a particular case, especially when no rule tells you what to do., lived experience. The bigger danger is not the machine but that we start to see ourselves this way.
Shannon VallorShannon Vallor — philosopher of technologyDescription from WikidataPhilosophy of technology2024
In their words
“OpenAI’s AGI bait-and-switch wipes anything that does not count as economically valuable work from the definition of intelligence. That’s a massive erasure of our human capacity and a reduction of ourselves that we should resist.”Connected ideas
derived from
- The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You ThinkSource
The quoted passage and the argument around it (section “What Is Superhuman AI?”).
related to
- ProxyConcept
Its target is a proxy definition of intelligence.
responds to
- What happens when the number becomes the goal?Question
Economically valuable work has become the proxy for intelligence.
- Which abilities should remain ours?Question
It defends capacities that are not tasks at all.
supports
- Labor, work and action are not one thingPosition
Reducing people to task performance is Arendt's collapse of the three activities into one.