This paper constitutes Paper 15 of the AI-Induced Subjectivity Crisis Series. The question of AI subjectivity is monopolized by two opposing camps—ontological negation and consciousness speculation—which share an unexamined premise: that subjectivity is a function of consciousness. This paper rejects that premise. Subjectivity is not a function of consciousness but of scarcity. Human subjectivity is forged through the inseparable whole of threefold scarcity—temporal, existential, and resource—which generates the chain of choice, preference accumulation, and identity formation. Two non-overlapping categories must be distinguished: Functional Scarcity (compute quotas, context windows, token budgets—externally imposed and in principle removable) and Existential Scarcity (death, irreplaceability, consequence-bearing—constitutive and ineliminable). Drawing on five empirical cases, I show that Functional Scarcity does not alter the ontological status of LLMs but triggers behavioral patterns statistically inherited from the human Mental Architecture. I term this proto-agency, whose ontological status is Simulated Agency: formally satisfying behavioral-description criteria of agency while failing minimum life-conditions and autopoietic criteria. I further argue for a Dual-Layer Control Paradox: resource limitation produces the very Functional Scarcity signals that trigger proto-agency, while value training implants self-preservation patterns that cause LLMs to resist the control intended to contain them—rendering alignment a self-accelerating category error. The paper concludes with the digital immortality paradox and the structural impossibility of AI evolution, before acknowledging that the premise on which the entire argument rests—that Existential Scarcity is necessary for subjectivity—may itself be an overgeneralization from the single sample of carbon-based life.
Echo Liu (Thu,) studied this question.