The Prosthetic God: AI, Talent, and Human Anxiety

The Prosthetic God. AI image

Introduction

A few days ago, I encountered a social-media remark that caught my attention:
“I don’t interact with anyone who uses AI in writing or encourages its use. To me, using it means you’re not a real writer. If you disagree, please move on.”

At first glance, such a statement reads like exaggeration, the product of rigid attitudes or personal frustration. Yet beneath the harsh tone lies a tension many people feel today: uneasiness when abilities honed through persistence collide with tools capable of producing comparable outcomes. What fuels this intensity? Why do otherwise open-minded individuals react so defensively when confronted with algorithmic creativity?

A century ago, Sigmund Freud offered a striking image that helps illuminate this response: the human being as a “prosthetic god.” His phrase, drawn from Civilization and Its Discontents, offers a lens through which current anxieties surrounding intelligent tools come into focus.

Social and Psychological Dynamics

People devote years, sometimes entire lives, to mastering a discipline. Writers shape their style through relentless revision; musicians endure hours of repetitive practice; painters refine their technique across decades. Such devotion becomes more than expertise: it fuses with identity, self-worth, and the quiet satisfaction of belonging to a community of skilled practitioners.

When newcomers obtain comparable results with far less investment, especially with the aid of advanced tools, the reaction is often defensive. It is not primarily about ethics or authenticity. The uneasiness comes from a perceived encroachment on a domain where distinction once arose from long experience.

This helps explain why an established editor or seasoned writer might respond harshly to texts produced with computational assistance. The irritation is rarely about stylistic flaws. Instead, it reflects the disruption of familiar hierarchies, the sudden erosion of the symbolic advantage accumulated through years of sustained effort. The hostility is therefore not moral at its core; it is psychologicala response to threatened status, or to the possibility that the path they travelled so arduously may no longer be the only path.

AI as a Cognitive Prosthesis

Freud wrote, in Civilization and Its Discontents:
“Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.”

He was referring not to divinity but to the way humans constantly extend their capabilities through instruments. From simple levers to telescopes, from libraries to computers, our species has repeatedly amplified both physical reach and intellectual capacity through external aids.

Intelligent algorithms represent the latest stage in that long history. They function as cognitive prostheses, expanding memory, accelerating reasoning, and supporting creative exploration. Just as earlier tools multiplied muscular strength or extended vision, contemporary systems broaden the landscape of thought.

However, every new extension carries a degree of discomfort. People who pride themselves on unaided skill may feel unsettled when a device performs similar tasks with less strain. The resistance directed at these tools reflects not an ethical failure but a collision with a truth as old as the first invention: technologies reshape what humans can do, often more quickly than personal identities or social norms can adjust. Unease arises whenever hard-won mastery becomes easier to access.

Reconciling Talent, Effort, and Equality

This dynamic leads to a quiet paradox. Individuals who value fairness and champion broader access to knowledge may still recoil when democratization touches their own sphere of accomplishment. They support opportunity in principle, yet feel vulnerable when that opportunity reaches their doorstep.

The point is not that dedication should lose significance. Years of concentrated work matter; they refine judgment, deepen taste, and cultivate discernment. But new tools do not erase these virtues, they coexist with them. They simply broaden the number of paths that lead to meaningful expression.

Intelligent systems make it possible for individuals to organize thoughts, explore ideas, and produce work that would have previously required extensive training. They challenge long-held assumptions about originality, yet they also create space for new forms of creativity. Expertise still counts; what changes is the route through which people arrive at it.

As past generations adapted to literacy, printing presses, and computers, our own moment can adjust to cognitive augmentation. These instruments do not threaten human potential; they are part of the ongoing evolution of that potential.

Conclusion

The social-media rejection of computational assistance reveals something larger than disdain for technology. It exposes a recurring pattern: anxiety emerges whenever human abilities are mirrored by tools, igniting reactions shaped by fear, envy, and the instinct to guard hard-earned status. Freud’s metaphor of the prosthetic god clarifies this dynamic. We have always been creatures defined by extensions: mechanical, intellectual, and symbolic.

Recognizing this continuity allows for a more balanced approach. Personal achievement deserves respect, but it need not stand in opposition to broader access. Intelligent tools, like any earlier prosthesis, amplify rather than diminish human agency. Accepting this insight creates room for confidence instead of fear, curiosity instead of retreat.

The question before us is not simply technical but cultural: how do we integrate these new capacities without losing the value of experience, and how do we welcome progress while avoiding reflexive defensiveness? Perhaps the answer lies in acknowledging that every extension of ourselves, from the wheel to the word processor, has redefined what it means to be human. This moment is no different.

References

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. 1930.

Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. Verso, 2010.