The Ontological Rupture: Superintelligence and the Transformation of Human Agency

This article examines the possible emergence of artificial superintelligence as an ontological rupture, a transformation in which humanity ceases to function as the primary agent of historical, ethical, and political meaning. Rather than treating advanced artificial intelligence as a neutral extension of human tools, the essay argues that sufficiently autonomous, self-modifying intelligence constitutes a novel form of nonhuman agency that destabilizes anthropocentric assumptions embedded in modern philosophy. Drawing on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marx, Kant, Rousseau, and Hegel, alongside contemporary reflections on artificial intelligence, the article analyzes how such a rupture reconfigures core concepts of agency, autonomy, sovereignty, and freedom. It explores transitional tensions across domains including work, political power, population governance, and cultural expression, framing these dynamics through a dialectical structure of disruption, contestation, and convergence. Classical dystopian imaginaries associated with Orwellian coercion and Huxleyan seduction are revisited and shown to be insufficient in isolation, giving way to a more complex synthesis in which optimization, harmony, and control coexist. Methodologically, the article employs philosophical analysis and speculative thought experimentation rather than predictive forecasting, treating timelines and empirical indicators as contextual signals rather than deterministic claims. The concluding reflection asks whether a post-scarcity, ecologically optimized order, potentially stabilized by nonhuman intelligence, preserves or extinguishes the tragic, creative dimensions historically associated with human freedom. By integrating non-Western perspectives such as Daoism, Ubuntu, and Confucian relational ethics, the essay situates posthuman futures within a plural philosophical horizon and invites critical engagement with the transformation of the human condition beyond human centrality.