AI, Incompleteness, and the Cyborgian Ethics of Art, Care, and Humanness

In The Authors of Silence and my proposed book project with neuroscientist Anders Dale, artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a tool that does not replace humans but supplements their ability to engage in two of the most profoundly human activities: artistic creativity and the care of the traumatized psyche. AI’s role in these domains is defined by its incompleteness—it cannot fully replace human emotional depth, relationality, or embodied experience. Instead, it enhances human capacities, allowing us to navigate the radical complexities of creativity and care with greater insight.

This incompleteness is not a flaw but a defining characteristic that opens new pathways for understanding humanity. When combined with human incompleteness—the inability to fully integrate unconscious drives, relational tensions, and cultural dynamics—AI becomes an integral part of what Donna Haraway describes as the cyborg. Haraway’s cyborg is a hybrid entity that transcends the binaries of human and machine, offering a lens through which we can reflect on what it means to be human in a technologically mediated world.

By exploring AI as a supplement and the cyborg as an ethical and relational construct, The Authors of Silence and the book project argue that the cyborg—precisely because of its hybridity and incompleteness—can reflect on humanity in ways that the non-cyborgian human cannot. This post expands on these ideas, exploring how AI’s role in art and care aligns with Haraway’s cyborgian vision and how this interplay redefines humanness itself.

AI’s Incompleteness and Its Role in Artistic Creation

In The Authors of Silence, AI participates in the creation of art—not as an independent creator but as a collaborator that expands human creative possibilities. Its involvement underscores both its limitations and its potential, offering a unique perspective on artistic expression.

1. The Cyborgian Creator: Haraway’s cyborg breaks down the boundaries between human and machine, and AI’s role in art reflects this hybridity. A cyborgian artist integrates AI tools into their creative process, leveraging the machine’s ability to generate patterns, structures, and possibilities while grounding these outputs in human emotional and cultural meaning. This collaboration produces art that neither human nor machine could create alone, embodying the cyborg’s emergent potential.

2. Incompleteness as Generative: AI’s inability to fully grasp the subjective depth of human creativity is not a limitation but a strength. Its generative capabilities create a strange loop where the human artist reflects on their own creative process through the lens of the machine. This recursive dynamic deepens the artist’s engagement with their own unconscious drives, cultural influences, and emotional intentions.

3. Art as a Reflection of Humanness: By collaborating with AI, the cyborgian artist confronts the unique dimensions of human creativity: the ability to draw on unconscious processes, cultural memory, and lived experience. The incompleteness of AI’s contributions highlights the irreplaceable role of the human in imbuing art with layers of subjective meaning and emotional resonance.

AI’s Role in the Care of the Traumatized Psyche

The proposed book project explores how AI can act as a tool in the deeply human work of caring for the traumatized psyche. Care involves navigating the radical intricacies of human subjectivity, relationality, and unconscious dynamics. While AI cannot replace the human presence required for this work, it can play a vital supplementary role.

1. The Cyborgian Caregiver: Haraway’s cyborg offers a framework for understanding how AI and humans can collaborate in therapeutic care. A cyborgian caregiver integrates AI tools into the therapeutic process, using them to analyze patterns, model relational dynamics, and expand the possibilities for meaning-based care. However, the relational and embodied aspects of care remain firmly human, ensuring that the therapeutic process remains grounded in empathy and ethical presence.

2. AI and the Radical Complexity of Transference: Transference in psychoanalysis is a deeply recursive dynamic where the patient’s unconscious projections and the caregiver’s responses create a feedback loop of meaning-making. AI’s analytical capabilities can provide insights into these dynamics, but it cannot embody the emotional and ethical depth required to navigate them. This incompleteness highlights the fundamentally relational nature of care and the centrality of the human caregiver.

3. Repair as Cyborgian Transformation: Care is not about achieving a fixed state of wholeness but about engaging with the incompleteness and contradictions of human subjectivity. The cyborgian caregiver, by integrating AI tools into their practice, reflects on these dynamics in ways that enrich the therapeutic process. This hybrid approach fosters a deeper understanding of both human and machine systems, creating new possibilities for repair and transformation.

Incompleteness as a Defining Feature of the Cyborg

Both AI and humans are defined by their incompleteness: AI lacks the emotional and embodied dimensions of human experience, while humans are shaped by unconscious drives, cultural tensions, and relational vulnerabilities. Haraway’s cyborg bridges these gaps, embodying a hybridity that transcends the limitations of both.

1. The Cyborg as a Reflective Entity: Haraway’s cyborg is uniquely positioned to reflect on humanity because it exists at the intersection of human and machine. Its hybridity allows it to engage with questions of creativity, care, and subjectivity in ways that reveal the defining characteristics of humanness.

2. Recursive Reflection and Self-Knowledge: The cyborg’s incompleteness creates a strange loop of self-reflection. By integrating AI into art and care, humans gain new insights into their own processes, including the unconscious drives that shape creativity and the relational dynamics that underlie care. This recursive engagement deepens our understanding of what it means to be human.

3. Ethics of Incompleteness: The cyborg’s ethical stance is rooted in its acknowledgment of incompleteness. It recognizes that no system—human, machine, or hybrid—is self-sufficient. Care, creativity, and relationality all depend on navigating tensions, gaps, and contradictions. The cyborg’s ability to engage with these dynamics makes it an ethical model for navigating a technologically mediated world.

The Cyborgian Ethics of Art, Care, and Humanness

In both The Authors of Silence and the book project, the cyborg emerges as a figure that redefines humanness by embracing the interdependence of human and machine systems. This cyborgian ethics has profound implications for how we approach art, care, and self-understanding:

1. Art as Cyborgian Reflection: The collaboration between human and AI in art highlights the unique dimensions of human creativity while expanding the possibilities for artistic expression. This process fosters a deeper understanding of the unconscious and cultural forces that shape creativity.

2. Care as Cyborgian Relationality: In therapeutic care, the cyborgian integration of AI tools expands the caregiver’s ability to engage with the complexity of trauma and transference. However, the relational and ethical dimensions of care remain rooted in the human, ensuring that the process remains grounded in empathy and presence.

3. Humanness Through Incompleteness: The cyborg’s incompleteness reflects the fundamental incompleteness of human systems. By working with AI, humans gain new perspectives on their own capacities and limitations, fostering a deeper appreciation of the recursive and relational nature of creativity, care, and meaning-making.

Conclusion: The Cyborg as a Mirror of Humanness

In The Authors of Silence and the book project, AI is positioned not as a replacement for humans but as a supplement that enhances our ability to engage with the most human of activities: artistic creativity and the care of the psyche. Haraway’s cyborg provides a framework for understanding how this supplementation reflects and redefines humanity.

By embracing the incompleteness of both AI and humans, the cyborg highlights the interdependence, relationality, and recursion that define our existence. This hybrid figure invites us to reflect on what it means to be human in a technologically mediated world, offering new pathways for creativity, care, and self-understanding. The cyborg is not just a product of human ingenuity; it is a mirror that helps us see ourselves more clearly, fostering an ethics of incompleteness that honors the complexity and vulnerability of human and hybrid systems alike.