Fear, Superiority, and the Relocation of Responsibility in AI Discourse: The Return of Judgment in the Age of AI

Conceptual working paper examining how contemporary AI discourse redistributes judgment and responsibility through narratives of fear, superiority, selection, and exclusion. The paper argues that apparently opposed narratives—fear that AI will take judgment away and fear that humans who cannot judge well enough will be left behind—are inverted expressions of the same underlying anxiety: anxiety about having to bear judgment. This manuscript was developed with AI-assisted support for drafting, structural organization, and language refinement.