Mikkel Rørbo
Mikkel Rørbo is an interdisciplinary researcher and, sometimes, artist and curator. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures and holds degrees in philosophy and cultural studies from University of Copenhagen. His work focuses on the philosophical dimensions of living with machine intelligences and speculative methods for critical engagement with emerging technologies. As an artist and curator, he has performed, released and exhibited internationally as well as collaborated with institutions, festivals and art spaces. He has written about and presented work on technology, philosophy and contemporary experiments in music.
Contact
Office Hours: by Appointment
Email: mikkel.rorbo[at]uni-ak.ac.at
Showroom: Mikkel Rørbo
- title
- Against Conciliation: Embracing the Machinic Hostile
- type
- Article
- keywords
- Philosophy, Posthumanism, Artificial Intelligence, Deleuze
- texts
- Abstract
- This paper challenges the prevailing tendency to anthropomorphize artificial intelligence by arguing for an embrace of machinic cognition as fundamentally alien and hostile to human-centered frameworks. Drawing on theoretical insights from Deleuze, Parisi, Wynter, and Land, the paper critiques contemporary AI discourse that seeks conciliation between human and machine intelligence through anthropomorphic representation. Instead of viewing AI as either a threat to be overcome or a tool to be domesticated, the paper proposes engaging with AI's radical alterity as a productive force for rethinking cognition and reason itself. The paper examines how attempts to reconcile human and machine intelligence reinforce anthropocentric power structures and colonial models of understanding difference through enlightenment reason. Furthermore, it suggests that truly alien machinic cognition exposes the artificial nature of all reasoning and challenges the primacy of human cognitive capabilities. The paper advocates for a perspective shift from interiority to exteriority, arguing that only by accepting AI's complete difference from human cognition can we genuinely comprehend its implications for reimagining humanity, reason, and subjectivity beyond fixed humanist categories.
- authors
- Mikkel Rørbo
- publishers
- Xenofuturism
- date
- 2025
- published in
- title
- Xenofuturism
- subtitle
- Technologies of Domination
- publishers
- Xenofuturism
- volume/issue
- 2
- pages
- 140-144
- language
- English