为什么尼采在人工智能时代如此重要

# Why Nietzsche Matters in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
# 为什么尼采在人工智能时代如此重要

> **EN:** Nietzsche’s vision of the human as a value-creating, self-overcoming agent speaks powerfully to the psychological and cultural ruptures of the AI age.
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> **中文:** 尼采将人类视为创造价值、自我超越的主体，这一愿景深刻地回应了人工智能时代所带来的心理和文化冲击。

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- **Author / 作者:** [Shaoshan Liu](https://cacm.acm.org/author/shaoshan-liu/)
- **Posted On / 发布于:** Nov 11, 2025

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**EN:** As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly reshapes the foundations of work, relationship, and ethics, contemporary societies face not only technological disruption but a deeper existential crisis. The rise of machine intelligence threatens to render human labor redundant, interpersonal bonds hollow, and moral frameworks opaque, eroding the structures that have long grounded meaning, identity, and collective life.

**中文:** 随着人工智能（AI）迅速重塑工作、人际关系和伦理的基础，当代社会不仅面临技术颠覆，更面临着一场深刻的存在危机。机器智能的崛起可能导致人类劳动力的冗余、人际关系的空洞化以及道德框架的模糊不清，从而侵蚀长期以来支撑我们意义、身份和集体生活的结构。

**EN:** This post argues that Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, forged in the crucible of a similar cultural upheaval during industrial modernity, offers crucial resources for navigating these dislocations. Nietzsche’s vision of the human as a value-creating, self-overcoming agent speaks powerfully to the psychological and cultural ruptures of the AI age.

**中文:** 本文认为，弗里德里希·尼采的哲学是在工业现代性时期类似的文化剧变中形成的，为我们应对这些混乱局面提供了至关重要的思想资源。尼采将人类视为创造价值、自我超越的主体，这一愿景深刻地回应了人工智能时代带来的心理和文化冲击。

**EN:** Yet while his framework remains relevant in confronting nihilism and affirming inner autonomy, it falls short in addressing the infrastructural and systemic dimensions of contemporary technological power. To meet the full scope of today’s challenges, we must evolve Nietzsche’s insights into a new philosophical orientation, one that integrates existential courage with civic responsibility, and personal authorship with collective ethical design.

**中文:** 然而，尽管他的框架在对抗虚无主义和肯定内在自主性方面仍然具有现实意义，但在应对当代技术力量的基础设施和系统性维度方面却有所欠缺。为了全面应对当今的挑战，我们必须将尼采的洞见发展为一种新的哲学方向，将存在的勇气与公民责任相结合，将个人创造与集体伦理设计相融合。

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## 1. The Rise of Nietzschean Philosophy
## 1. 尼采哲学的兴起

**EN:** In the late 19th century, Europe was undergoing profound transformation. Scientific rationalism and Enlightenment ideals, once thought to supplant religious authority and secure universal progress, began to reveal cracks, leaving societies in a state of cultural disorientation and moral uncertainty. Industrialization reshaped social life, traditional hierarchies eroded, and many found themselves adrift in a world that no longer offered shared metaphysical grounding for values and purpose.

**中文:** 19世纪末，欧洲正经历着深刻的变革。科学理性主义和启蒙运动的理想曾被认为可以取代宗教权威并确保普遍进步，但此时却开始出现裂痕，使社会陷入文化迷失和道德不确定的状态。工业化重塑了社会生活，传统等级制度瓦解，许多人在一个不再为价值观和目标提供共同形而上学基础的世界里感到漂泊无依。

**EN:** It was in this context that Friedrich Nietzsche developed a philosophy aimed at confronting what he identified as the defining crisis of modernity: **nihilism**, the collapse of inherited meanings and the loss of faith in absolute truths. Rather than retreat into despair, Nietzsche responded with a philosophy of affirmation. He argued that individuals must become value creators, shaping purpose not through obedience to external systems, but through acts of self-overcoming and existential authorship. Central to this vision was the **will to power**, not as a quest for domination, but as a drive toward growth, creative agency, and the revaluation of values.

**中文:** 正是在这样的背景下，弗里德里希·尼采发展出一种哲学，旨在直面他所认定的现代性决定性危机：**虚无主义**，即传统意义的崩溃和对绝对真理信仰的丧失。尼采没有退缩到绝望之中，而是以一种肯定的哲学作为回应。他主张，个人必须成为价值的创造者，不是通过服从外部体系来塑造目标，而是通过自我超越和存在主义式的创造行为来实现。这一愿景的核心是**权力意志**，它并非追求统治，而是一种追求成长、创造性能动性和价值观重估的驱动力。

**EN:** A pivotal figure in this framework is the **Übermensch**, or “overhuman,” who exemplifies a new mode of living: generating meaning from within, and embracing life with autonomy, responsibility, and courage. This ideal rejects passive conformity and institutional dependence, urging the individual to become the author of their own ethical world.

**中文:** 这个框架中的一个关键人物是**超人**（Übermensch），他代表了一种新的生活方式：从内在产生意义，并以自主、责任和勇气拥抱生活。这一理想拒绝被动的顺从和对制度的依赖，敦促个人成为自己伦理世界的创造者。

**EN:** Nietzsche’s philosophy offered more than a diagnosis of moral collapse, it provided a psychological and cultural toolkit for reorientation. For many grappling with the vacuum left by the decline of religious and social certainties, his ideas opened a path toward moral independence, creative expression, and inner resilience. Thinkers such as Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, and later existentialists drew on Nietzsche to articulate a vision of the human being as a self-constituting agent in an unstable world. In this way, Nietzsche’s thought not only illuminated the conditions of modern dislocation, it empowered people to navigate them with purpose and authenticity.

**中文:** 尼采的哲学不仅仅是对道德崩溃的诊断，它还提供了一个用于重新定位的心理和文化工具箱。对于许多在宗教和社会确定性衰落后留下的真空中挣扎的人来说，他的思想开辟了一条通往道德独立、创造性表达和内在韧性的道路。卡尔·荣格、马丁·海德格尔以及后来的存在主义者等思想家都借鉴了尼采的思想，阐述了在一个不稳定的世界中，人类作为自我构成主体的愿景。通过这种方式，尼采的思想不仅揭示了现代社会混乱的状况，还赋予了人们以目标和真实性来应对这些状况的力量。

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## 2. Displacement and Disintegration: Societal Challenges in the AI Age
## 2. 取代与瓦解：人工智能时代的社会挑战

**EN:** In the past decade, the development of AI has accelerated dramatically, marked by breakthroughs in large language models and generative systems. More recently, AI has evolved into a pervasive force embodied in physical systems, including robots, autonomous vehicles, service machines—that sense, move, and act in the real world. This shift from abstract computation to embodied AI signals a deeper transformation in how AI intersects with society.

**中文:** 在过去十年中，人工智能的发展急剧加速，以大型语言模型和生成系统的突破为标志。最近，人工智能已经演变成一种普遍存在的力量，并体现在物理系统中，包括机器人、自动驾驶汽车、服务型机器等——它们能够在现实世界中感知、移动和行动。这种从抽象计算到具身人工智能的转变，标志着人工智能与社会交叉方式的更深层次变革。

### 2.1 The Displacement of Work and the Crisis of Meaning
### 2.1 工作的取代与意义危机

**EN:** Among the most immediate effects of AI advancement is its transformation of the labor market. Embodied AI is reshaping manufacturing, logistics, and service industries through automation at unprecedented scale. With the EAI market projected to reach one billion robots at an average cost of $35,000, the economic potential is vast. Yet these gains come with deep human costs. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report estimates 83 million jobs may be displaced globally, disproportionately affecting low- and mid-skill workers.

**中文:** 人工智能进步最直接的影响之一是它对劳动力市场的改变。具身人工智能正通过前所未有的自动化规模重塑制造业、物流业和服务业。预计具身人工智能市场将达到十亿台机器人，平均成本为35,000美元，其经济潜力巨大。然而，这些收益伴随着沉重的人力成本。世界经济论坛《2023年未来就业报告》估计，全球可能有8300万个工作岗位被取代，这对中低技能工人的影响尤为严重。

**EN:** While policy responses such as robot taxes or universal basic income have been proposed, economic support alone cannot replace the **social and psychological value of meaningful work**. For centuries, work has functioned not only as a source of livelihood, but as a core pillar of personal identity, purpose, and societal recognition. As AI continues to erode traditional employment structures, individuals are not merely losing jobs, they are losing frameworks through which they make sense of their place in the world. Empirical studies show that involuntary unemployment correlates strongly with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and reduced life satisfaction, especially when individuals feel their contributions are no longer valued by society.

**中文:** 尽管已经提出了机器人税或全民基本收入等政策应对措施，但仅靠经济支持无法取代**有意义工作的社会和心理价值**。几个世纪以来，工作不仅是谋生手段，也是个人身份、目标和社会认可的核心支柱。随着人工智能不断侵蚀传统的就业结构，个人失去的不仅仅是工作，更是他们理解自身在世界中所处位置的框架。实证研究表明，非自愿失业与更高的抑郁、焦虑率和生活满意度下降密切相关，尤其是当个人感到自己的贡献不再被社会所重视时。

**EN:** Addressing this crisis demands more than retraining programs. It requires a reframing of what human roles ought to be in an AI-saturated world, emphasizing uniquely human capacities such as creativity, empathy, ethical reasoning, and relational care. These are not only economically valuable but psychologically essential to a resilient society. In this respect, our era echoes the modernity crisis Nietzsche confronted in the late 19th century: just as industrialization and rationalism destabilized inherited sources of meaning in his time, today’s AI revolution risks generating a new vacuum of purpose. Nietzsche’s call to become value-creators in the face of nihilism offers a powerful lens through which to interpret the existential challenges of AI-driven economic transformation.

**中文:** 应对这场危机需要的不仅仅是再培训计划，而是要重新定义在人工智能饱和的世界里，人类应该扮演什么样的角色，并强调人类独有的能力，如创造力、同理心、伦理推理和人际关怀。这些能力不仅具有经济价值，对于建立一个有韧性的社会也至关重要。在这方面，我们这个时代呼应了尼采在19世纪末所面对的现代性危机：正如他那个时代的工业化和理性主义动摇了既有的意义来源，今天的人工智能革命也可能造成新的目标真空。尼采面对虚无主义时发出的成为价值创造者的呼吁，为我们解读人工智能驱动的经济转型所带来的存在挑战提供了一个有力的视角。

### 2.2 The Displacement of Relationship and the Rise of Social Emptiness
### 2.2 人际关系的取代与社会空虚的兴起

**EN:** AI is not only displacing labor but redefining human connection. AI systems are increasingly embedded in caregiving, education, and everyday communication. These systems may simulate empathy, but they lack mutuality. As artificial intimacy rises, genuine emotional bonds risk being replaced by predictable, one-sided interaction.

**中文:** 人工智能不仅在取代劳动力，还在重新定义人际联系。人工智能系统正越来越多地被嵌入到护理、教育和日常交流中。这些系统可以模拟同理心，但缺乏相互性。随着人造亲密感的增加，真实的情感纽带有可能被可预测的、单向的互动所取代。

**EN:** As machines begin to simulate empathy, offer companionship, and mediate social interaction, they risk displacing the complex reciprocity that defines human relationships. Emotional labor, once grounded in mutual understanding and vulnerability, is reduced to programmed responses—efficient, predictable, but ultimately hollow. The rise of “artificial intimacy” may numb the very capacities that sustain real connection: trust, empathy, and shared presence.

**中文:** 随着机器开始模拟同理心、提供陪伴并调节社会互动，它们可能会取代定义人际关系的复杂互惠性。情感劳动曾经建立在相互理解和脆弱性的基础上，如今却被简化为程序化的反应——高效、可预测，但最终是空洞的。“人造亲密感”的兴起可能会麻痹维持真实联系所需的能力：信任、同理心和共同在场。

**EN:** Ironically, as people grow more reliant on AI-driven systems in everyday life, many report heightened feelings of loneliness, alienation, and disconnection. What emerges is not merely a technological shift, but a reorganization of the social scaffolding through which identity and belonging are formed. Families, schools, and civic spaces, the traditional containers of meaning, are being eclipsed by machine-mediated routines that fail to nourish the human need for authentic relationship.

**中文:** 具有讽刺意味的是，随着人们在日常生活中越来越依赖人工智能驱动的系统，许多人报告说孤独感、疏离感和脱节感加剧。这不仅仅是技术上的转变，更是对形成身份认同和归属感的社会结构的重组。家庭、学校和公民空间这些传统的意义容器，正被机器调节的程序所取代，而这些程序无法满足人类对真实关系的需求。

**EN:** Although Nietzsche did not foresee AI replacing human intimacy, his philosophy remains instructive. By urging individuals to resist passive conformity and cultivate authentic inner strength, Nietzsche offers a framework for reclaiming emotional depth in an age of synthetic connection. His call to affirm life and create meaning from within challenges us to preserve the human capacity for genuine relationship, even when machines begin to mimic its form.

**中文:** 尽管尼采没有预见到人工智能会取代人类的亲密关系，但他的哲学仍然具有启发意义。通过敦促个人抵制被动顺从、培养真实的内在力量，尼采为在一个合成连接的时代重拾情感深度提供了一个框架。他呼吁肯定生命并从内在创造意义，这挑战我们在机器开始模仿人类关系形式时，仍要保护人类建立真实关系的能力。

### 2.3 The Erosion of Shared Norms and Moral Frameworks
### 2.3 共同规范和道德框架的侵蚀

**EN:** As AI systems increasingly mediate decisions in hiring, healthcare, policing, and finance, they are displacing human judgment with algorithmic logic, often optimized for efficiency but opaque in rationale. These systems are trained on biased data, embedded with corporate or institutional values, and deployed without transparent accountability. The result is a quiet erosion of shared moral frameworks: decisions once grounded in social norms and public deliberation now unfold within technical infrastructure, beyond the reach of democratic oversight.

**中文:** 随着人工智能系统在招聘、医疗、警务和金融等领域越来越多地介入决策，它们正在用算法逻辑取代人类判断，这种逻辑通常以效率为优化目标，但其原理却不透明。这些系统使用有偏见的数据进行训练，嵌入了企业或机构的价值观，并且在部署时缺乏透明的问责机制。其结果是共同道德框架的悄然侵蚀：过去基于社会规范和公众审议的决策，现在在技术基础设施内展开，超出了民主监督的范围。

**EN:** This condition parallels the cultural dislocation Nietzsche observed in modern Europe, where the decline of metaphysical and religious authorities undermined society’s ability to sustain shared ethical meaning. In both cases, individuals are left navigating fragmented norms without clear foundations or frameworks for trust and responsibility. Algorithmic systems now make value-laden choices, about risk, fairness, and worth, without mechanisms for public deliberation, reinforcing privatized, reactive ethics.

**中文:** 这种情况与尼采在现代欧洲观察到的文化错位相似，当时形而上学和宗教权威的衰落削弱了社会维持共同伦理意义的能力。在这两种情况下，个人都不得不在没有明确基础或信任与责任框架的情况下，应对碎片化的规范。算法系统现在在没有公众审议机制的情况下做出关于风险、公平和价值等充满价值判断的选择，从而强化了一种私有化的、被动反应式的伦理。

**EN:** Nietzsche’s philosophy remains highly relevant here. His emphasis on internal value creation and ethical autonomy offers a compelling response to normative collapse. Yet, in the AI era, where decisions are shaped not just by culture but by infrastructure, individual moral authorship must be coupled with systemic reform. Transparent algorithm design, collective oversight, and inclusive value-setting processes are essential to rebuild social trust and ethical coherence in an increasingly automated world.

**中文:** 尼采的哲学在此时仍然具有高度相关性。他强调内在价值创造和伦理自主，为规范崩溃提供了一个有力的回应。然而，在人工智能时代，决策不仅受文化影响，还受基础设施的塑造，因此个人道德的构建必须与系统性改革相结合。透明的算法设计、集体监督和包容性的价值设定过程对于在一个日益自动化的世界中重建社会信任和伦理一致性至关重要。

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## 3. Revisiting Nietzsche in the Age of AI
## 3. 在人工智能时代重温尼采

**EN:** The crises brought by AI, displacement of work, erosion of relationships, and fragmentation of ethical norms, echo the existential ruptures Nietzsche diagnosed in the late 19th century. Then, it was the decline of religion and the rise of industrial modernity that unmoored the individual from inherited frameworks of meaning. Today, the ascent of AI threatens a similar disintegration, not only of livelihoods but of emotional bonds and moral cohesion. In both moments, a core question arises: how can humans navigate a world where familiar structures of purpose and value are dissolving?

**中文:** 人工智能带来的危机——工作的取代、关系的侵蚀以及伦理规范的碎片化——呼应了尼采在19世纪末诊断出的存在主义断裂。当时，是宗教的衰落和工业现代性的兴起，使个人脱离了既有的意义框架。如今，人工智能的崛起也带来了类似的瓦解威胁，不仅威胁到生计，还威胁到情感纽带和道德凝聚力。在这两个时刻，一个核心问题都浮现出来：在一个熟悉的目标和价值结构正在消解的世界里，人类该何去何从？

**EN:** Nietzsche’s response to the crisis of modernity was to reject passive dependence on external systems and call for the revaluation of values from within. His figure of the Übermensch, who affirms life, creates meaning, and embraces responsibility for their own becoming, offers a compelling model of existential authorship. In the AI era, where people increasingly experience redundancy, disconnection, and ethical disorientation, Nietzsche’s emphasis on self-overcoming provides a path toward psychological resilience. His philosophy speaks not only to the economic or social effects of automation, but to the deeper human need to feel significant in an indifferent, automated world.

**中文:** 尼采对现代性危机的回应是拒绝被动依赖外部系统，并呼吁从内部进行价值观的重估。他所描绘的“超人”形象——肯定生命、创造意义，并为自己的成长承担责任——提供了一个引人注目的存在主义创造模型。在人工智能时代，人们日益感到冗余、脱节和伦理迷失，尼采对自我超越的强调为我们提供了通往心理韧性的道路。他的哲学不仅关乎自动化的经济或社会影响，更触及了人类在一个冷漠、自动化的世界中感受自身重要性的深层需求。

**EN:** However, Nietzsche’s framework, while powerful in facing cultural nihilism, does not fully address the structural nature of today’s technological crisis. The challenges of the AI age are not only internal, but they are also infrastructural. Algorithms shape behavior invisibly, platforms centralize power, and decisions made by machines often escape public scrutiny. Nietzsche’s focus on individual strength and authenticity does not equip us to deal with systems operating far beyond individual agency. His critique of mass morality, though liberating in its time, offers little guidance for building collective mechanisms of accountability, transparency, and shared governance.

**中文:** 然而，尼采的框架虽然在应对文化虚无主义方面十分有力，但并未完全解决当今技术危机的结构性问题。人工智能时代的挑战不仅是内在的，也是基础设施层面的。算法在无形中塑造行为，平台集中了权力，而机器做出的决策往往逃避公众监督。尼采对个人力量和真实性的关注，并不能帮助我们应对那些远超个人能动性范围的系统。他对大众道德的批判虽然在当时具有解放意义，但对于建立集体问责、透明和共同治理的机制却鲜有指导。

**EN:** What is needed now is a philosophical evolution: one that preserves Nietzsche’s call for inner autonomy but integrates it with systemic awareness. We must move from solitary value-creation to relational meaning-making, from self-affirmation to co-designed futures. A new philosophy for the AI era must confront not only the question of how to remain human in the face of machines, but how to shape the systems through which humans and machines now co-exist. It must cultivate both existential courage and civic imagination, bridging the personal and the political, the ethical and the architectural. Only then can we meet the age of AI not with fear or resignation, but with a renewed, collective will to meaning.

**中文:** 现在需要的是一种哲学上的演进：既要保留尼采对内在自主的呼吁，又要将其与系统性意识相结合。我们必须从孤立的价值创造转向关系性的意义建构，从自我肯定转向共同设计的未来。一个适应人工智能时代的新哲学，不仅要面对“在机器面前如何保持人性”的问题，还要思考如何塑造人机共存的系统。它必须同时培养存在的勇气和公民的想象力，连接个人与政治、伦理与建构。只有这样，我们才能不以恐惧或顺从，而是以一种更新的、集体的意义意志来迎接人工智能时代。

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