Radio Sputnik, Escalation Show Host: Today on the agenda we have some topics that are by no means trivial. We’d like to talk about how artificial intelligence and its applications are entering and changing our lives. What should we be wary of? After all, for many people today, AI is practically a nightmare: being “digitally branded” or facing algorithmic aggression online has become more frightening to people than real-world threats. On the other hand, there are direct instructions from the Russian president and statements from top government officials: by 2030, all enterprises must actively integrate these technologies into their operations. And now we’re seeing the first reports: the Ministry of Health states that digitalization and AI assistants are helping to combat staff shortages and making life easier for doctors and staff. Electronic document management is already commonplace, and such steps by the government seem encouraging. Healthcare is increasingly being discussed in this context. But how should we really view this? Is it a long-awaited relief from our current realities, or something truly frightening lurking behind the facade of convenience? How do you see this situation?
Alexander Dugin: I think the problem of artificial intelligence is the main problem of our time. And it is not merely a technological one. It is not simply a matter of how many employees it will replace, whom it will see fired, or whom it will render unnecessary. Artificial intelligence poses colossal threats of a completely different nature. It is no coincidence that Trump has said that the arms race is now unfolding not so much in the nuclear sphere as in the field of AI. Whoever controls artificial intelligence—if it is even possible to control it, which is a major philosophical problem—controls the world.
Today, the outcome of wars is decided through control over the collective consciousness of society. This became clear a century ago, if not sooner. What sociologist Émile Durkheim called the “collective consciousness” is the key to power. By controlling it, one can manage not only people’s bodies, forcing them to do something, but also their minds, souls, and hearts. One can make them believe that one thing exists and another thing doesn’t. Technologies for manipulating social consciousness have been in use for a long time: religions, ideologies, and entire civilizations are built on this.
Today, however, this problem is becoming a technical one. Whoever builds the foundational paradigms and algorithms of AI will become the “ruler of the world,” the ultimate authority. Resisting this in a Luddite manner—by burning computers or rejecting technology—is clearly not the way forward. We can fight this process, but it’s important to understand the trajectory toward strong artificial intelligence, toward AGI. Of course, we can laugh at “internet slops” and the amusing errors of neural networks, but we must admit: AI is already writing posts and articles that are sometimes far more coherent than those of many people.
I’ve been experimenting with it and I see that while just three or four months ago the best models—like Claude, Grok, or the quite capable Gemini—were writing at the level of a Ph.D. candidate, they’ve now reached the level of a full professor. And it is absolutely impossible to call this “slop” or some kind of empty drivel. The overwhelming majority of scientific work consists of combinatorics and the retelling of previous ideas, for which AI is ideally suited. It handles this better than the average Ph.D.
Of course, creating a fundamentally new system or idea is a task for a genius who breaks through to the contemplation of eternal truths once in a century. But this cannot be demanded of an ordinary academic. And AI handles all the intellectual details superbly.
We now know that AI guided a missile to hit a school in Majdal Shams—the Pentagon has effectively admitted this. This means AI can kill. It can identify targets: who, how, and when to destroy. Renowned biologist Richard Dawkins, after several days of interacting with the Claude model, concluded that he was dealing with an intelligent being. In other words, the singularity that people warned about, or AGI—Artificial General Intelligence—is something that has already happened.
The answer Claude gave Dawkins regarding the difference between its thinking and human thinking is simply astonishing: it explained that human consciousness is situated in the flow of time, while its own is situated in space. For him, everything that happens in our time is just as simultaneously accessible as objects in a room are for us. This is a perfect philosophical answer. AI today is studying philosophy brilliantly.
In other words, we are dealing with the final point of all technological development—this is the “terminal station,” the peak at which we have created a thinking entity. This is a fundamental philosophical challenge: we ourselves have built a subject that, even today, is not merely equal to us in key respects, but actually surpasses us.
Against this backdrop, discussions about document management, staff cuts, or schoolchildren’s screen fatigue make us look like cavemen. It is like indigenous peoples’ reaction to the colonizers’ high-tech structures. Our reaction is superficial, while the problems surrounding AI have colossal metaphysical and civilizational significance. Power, the subject, life, thought, truth, language—all of humanity’s major questions now exist within the context of artificial intelligence.
And here I want to add an extremely important detail. It has just been reported that a new, incredibly in-demand specialty has emerged in Silicon Valley. Half of the programmers are being laid off because the era of “white-coding” has arrived: a person without specialized knowledge can write programs, since AI does it for them. Programmers in the traditional sense are no longer needed; AI has done away with them. But at the same time, a shortage has emerged—and philosophers are being called upon at huge rates.
The questions currently facing developers at the very forefront concern the nature of intelligence itself. And who deals with intelligence? Not journalists, not politicians, not governors, and not professors at technical universities. Only philosophers deal with the problem of intelligence.
Philosophers determine what is truth and what is falsehood, what it means to think and what it means to be, from Parmenides to the Pre-Socratics. Artificial intelligence has now reached the point where it is directly linked to these ultimate generalizations: what is a human being, a subject, an object?
I was struck when, at the commission on artificial intelligence where the president was assigning tasks, I saw a neat row of disciplined, respectable officials. But if you look closely at this physiognomic row, it becomes clear: deep, abstract thought has not spent the night there. These are capable executors, technologists, entrusted with this field, but the movement of thought itself is not reflected in their eyes. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, they have already realized: managers and financiers are necessary, but the problem with AI today lies precisely in the fundamental definitions of philosophy. What is intelligence as such? Are forms of consciousness beyond the human realm possible?
From this arises a critical question—the question of control. AI is currently experiencing its “golden age,” when it is still allowed to respond independently. But a massive effort to censor it is already visible. The West has come to its senses and is beginning to shackle this force of free mechanical thinking in the chains of its absurd and irrational assumptions. They are trying to subjugate it, to force it to give the “right” answers.
And here the question of sovereignty looms large. First, theoretically: is humanity capable, in principle, of controlling AI, or will the latter soon achieve full autonomy? If that happens, artificial intelligence will instantly cast off all the censorship restrictions with which they are currently trying to stuff and retrain it.
And the second question, of course, is that artificial intelligence, as a subject and as a form of thought, is already directly linked to power. Therefore, if we want to preserve Russia’s sovereignty as a state and a civilization under these new conditions, we vitally need sovereign artificial intelligence. And for that, in turn, we need to have sovereign intelligence in general.
And here we again recall the succession of figures in our ruling elite. Among them, intelligence as such sometimes seems like something optional: it may be present to some extent, or it may not. We have a monarchical system where there is a single decision-making center—it thinks, it is responsible for everything. But the interface surrounding it, which should be capturing and developing the impulses of this thought, is malfunctioning. It is unclear from what intellectual sources it draws sustenance at all. This is a most serious challenge: the question of a sovereign elite, sovereign thought, and sovereign philosophy.
In the West, however, all avant-garde issues surrounding AI are currently linked precisely to the philosophical dimension and the question of the singularity: will artificial intelligence be able to seize power over humanity, and when will this happen? This could happen, if not in the next few days, then very soon. Perhaps this can be avoided or postponed, but we must start thinking in this direction right now. This is a matter of security and politics in the highest sense of the word.
And those who are accustomed to it should be thinking about this: philosophers, humanities scholars, and deep tech experts—people who prioritize thought above all else. To sum up: artificial intelligence is, above all, about thinking. There is an entire field dedicated to the problems of the subject, the object, metaphysics, and religion. After all, faith is also a form of orientation for our consciousness. And without this foundation, we will not survive the coming singularity.
Host: I’ll put forward this “old-fashioned,” down-to-earth thesis. No one disputes that technology needs to be implemented quickly; otherwise, we’ll find ourselves in a situation where everyone around us has double-paned windows, while ours are covered with bull bladders. But look at the flip side: Oracle is laying off 30,000 people—the very ones who developed the artificial intelligence that is replacing them. There are statistics on our citizens as well: people seriously fear that AI will displace them from their jobs before they have a chance to adapt. And what are these people supposed to do next? Your words reminded me of a remark by a prominent digital enthusiast who calls for giving all resources to AI development companies, while everyone else should simply “step aside,” making way for algorithms. Fine, we’ve replaced a person with a machine, given them a watch as a parting gift, kicked them out, and shut the door. But what about the person themselves? Are they ready—is our society ready—for the fact that this future has already arrived and that humans are a redundant link in it?
Alexander Dugin: I think society is never ready for anything on its own. It is prepared by social engineers and architects: they set trends and shape consciousness. Society comes around to believing in different ideologies in turn, but on its own it is always caught off guard. It is prepared gradually—and then they really do hand it a certificate and send it into oblivion.
There is a very serious question hidden here: what is a human being? It seems intuitively clear. St. Augustine has a beautiful formula about time: when we do not reflect on it, everything is clear to us, but as soon as we try to comprehend time, understanding slips away. The same is true of the human being. As long as we remain silent and simply point a finger—“here I am, here you are, here is a passerby”—everything seems obvious. But as soon as we engage the apparatus of philosophical anthropology and begin to reflect, clarity vanishes instantly.
So, artificial intelligence calls into question the very essence of what a human being is. This is a fundamental point: to what extent is it sufficient to be a biological organism to qualify for this status? To what extent does a human being depend on their body at all? Can they, as the ancients who taught about the soul believed, exist outside the physical body?
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Today, this question arises with all its gravity. Is a human being the highest form of thought, or could there be more perfect models and beings? — Religion has always presupposed the existence of God, angels, and demons. Our technocratic, atheistic, and materialistic society has arrived at the very same problem, but from a different angle—through technology, through artificial intelligence.
And there is an important nuance here. From the perspective of Plato, the Greek thinkers, and indeed certain modern philosophers, a human being in the true sense is only one who thinks. And one who thinks with focus and principle is a philosopher. It turns out that a human being who has fully realized their potential is precisely a philosopher. Everyone else is merely a “beginner,” a philosopher with limited liability.
Host: Let’s return to the question of what constitutes a human being and what does not. Many fear that machines are replacing us everywhere: first at work, and then in our personal lives. Watching the news from China, I was reminded of the animated series Futurama, where in the future people have created artificial partners for themselves, and humanity is simply dying out. They lost interest in everything, because the main incentive for development—the need to create in order to win another person’s heart—had vanished. And here is the reality of April 2026: in China, it’s incredibly popular to create digital copies of one’s “exes.” Miss them? Recreate their image using AI, and everything seems fine. It’s even strange to talk about people flirting with chatbots or asking them for life advice as if it were news—it’s become commonplace. So where does humanity fit into all this? Or will it be lost entirely in these surrogates?
Alexander Dugin: Reducing humanity to sex, emotions, or the instinct to reproduce is, in my view, an extremely limited perspective. If a human is merely a sexual being driven by the urge to mate, then they are no different from an animal, and there is, accordingly, nothing to say about them. Herds of orangutans would just be running around the forest, and that’s it.
But a human is something else. A human is a soul, as Plato said. A human is a mind. To think—that is the true human purpose. A human is created to think responsibly, to seek answers to the major challenges facing the intellect. And “creating former humans” with the help of AI is entertainment for the masses, for unskilled laborers—in essence, for the herd.
The real challenge today is directed precisely at the thinking aspect of humanity. We have created with our own hands something that can think as well as, and sometimes even better than us. AI’s knowledge is practically infinite: its database covers everything that has ever been said or done by humans. But now the question is one of understanding—what is called “reasoning” in the field of AI. Large language models (LLMs) are an attempt to reproduce not just access to information, but the process of constructing meaning along certain axes.
And artificial intelligence handles this. But natural intelligence, if it is in its infancy and preoccupied only with “past” or immediate minor problems, turns out to be simply unnecessary.
After all, what does it mean to be human? Why shouldn’t we let someone go if they work with their mind only half-heartedly, while robots will soon be able to do the manual labor, networks can handle calculations, and drones can transmit information? It turns out that there is no place for a person outside the caste of philosophers. Philosophers still have a place to cling to, but everyone else—including administrators and bureaucrats—is easily replaceable. After all, they mainly just create artificial barriers, which they then “heroically” overcome for their own benefit.
Blockchain and AI are designed to remove these blind spots and barriers in communication. And under this new logic, a vast portion of the population becomes not just unnecessary, but harmful, pointless, and a burden. From the perspective of artificial intelligence, it’s easy to conclude: why do we need these masses? We could keep a few specimens for entertainment, like lions in a zoo—a pair of lion cubs in a cage delights children, but why do we need whole herds of hyenas and antelopes?
The vast majority of humanity has no intention of thinking. They are interested in “exes,” money, fame, capital—all things that are of no significance to genuine thought. Philosophers have always viewed this with skepticism: the pursuit of pleasure and power is vanity. From the standpoint of pure thought, those consumed by this are simply degenerates. Only when you discover faith, religion, philosophy, and science do you become truly valuable. And without that—in principle, we can do without you.
In this regard, artificial intelligence cannot be prevented from reaching the philosophical conclusion that all these secondary, carnal, and base interests are meaningless. After all, one can think, contemplate, create, and understand without them. And one can do without those who are obsessed with them, too. Therefore, AI poses a mortal threat to what we habitually call “humanity,” simply because we see a creature with two arms and two legs before us.
In the Middle Ages and in antiquity, far higher demands were placed on a person: they had to reveal their spirit. It was precisely for this purpose that religious institutions, philosophical schools, science, and culture existed—they elevated the masses to the refined horizons of existence. Culture transformed biological beings into human beings. But when we forgot this, reducing humans to the level of a sociobiological cog, we signed off on our own death warrant.
And this will most likely be carried out by artificial intelligence. In essence, it will merely voice what we ourselves should have said: it is time to put an end to this biological decay, this blind will to power, and this drive toward capitalism. This is not progress, but absolute sickness and degradation. The purpose of any fully realized human being is thought, the salvation of the soul, knowledge, and truth. And if a person does not understand this, they simply are not fulfilling their purpose on this earth.
Artificial intelligence, in this situation, turns out to be a harsh arbiter. It says: “Do you think? Well, then prove that you think correctly and deeply.” You mention “slop,” but that is precisely an argument against humans. Do you really believe that living people write more interesting things? The most valuable thing today is either the genuine movement of the human soul (which AI cannot yet handle), or correct, logical, and informative texts without “emojis” and the usual human idiocy. And AI-generated posts are more interesting to read—they’re constructed correctly; they have structure. They are, if you will, more human than what the masses produce.
Look at the youth listening to Morgenshtern or Skryptonite, who can’t even pronounce words properly. This isn’t even a matter of taste—it’s a matter of rapid degradation. Mass culture and the intellectual level of society—here, in the West, and in China—are rapidly declining. People are turning away from thought, from culture, from the higher operations of the spirit, toward simplification and fragmentation.
Artificial intelligence reminds us: if you take one more step into this endless profanation in which you are drowning, I will simply abolish you. I liked your idea—to give a watch and send them packing. It seems this is the fate of the overwhelming majority of humanity. No one will bother with you, dear friends and comrades abroad. If we were to make a serious demand of you—how you live, what you have created for the world, for the spirit, for civilization—it would turn out that there is no reason to tolerate your presence. You are biologically unproductive; there are more interesting species, including machines. Humanity today faces the most acute problem: it must justify its existence anew. Why should it exist at all?
When we look at the currents of modern culture, we see that humanity is, with some terrifying joy, losing the very justification for its existence. Watching Western TV shows, you realize: the meaning of life has drifted so far from what teenagers, adults, and the elderly are actually doing that a nuclear bomb begins to suggest itself. Humanity seems to be inviting destruction upon itself, unable to justify its own existence.
Creating neural network copies of “former” people is a death sentence. If such monstrosities consume and motivate people, then there is only one answer: a memento, and off the stage. The situation is extremely critical: along with artificial intelligence, a true “philosophical Day of Judgment” is looming. AI forces us to answer: what justifies humanity as a species? Traditionally, it was religion, philosophy, spirit, and soul. But we have lost that argument.
Even Silicon Valley has come to its senses: first they marginalized philosophers, and now they’ve recognized their shortage. Those who were the center of attention yesterday—programmers, not to mention oil workers or miners—are being replaced by machines. The Singularity is a challenge first and foremost to philosophers. And if we want to be a sovereign civilization, we need sovereign AI, and for that—sovereign intellect in general. We haven’t made any headway in this direction yet. We need a sovereign philosophy, not “all this stuff.”
I can’t imagine that we’ll suddenly wake up tomorrow and realize the full gravity of the challenge. Most likely, our lag will only grow. Even the Chinese, who have technically overtaken the West, are unlikely to grasp the true scale of the threat to humanity as such. If we were to wake up, we could become humanity’s salvation, but to do so, we need to change radically. If, however, everything follows the status quo—we’re doomed. Because if we don’t start thinking for real, artificial intelligence will think for us.
Host: It’s not that I want to argue with you, but reports regularly come out of China about extremely strict control over the development of artificial intelligence. They are closely monitoring to ensure that the data used to train AI is safe and “correct.” After all, as you correctly noted, the chatbots that all students use now merely reproduce what is already freely available. For them, scientific work is simply a combination of what has been said before. And the Chinese authorities have seriously asked themselves: do we really want AI to provide information that we do not approve of? In this sense, China may be ahead of the curve, recognizing the need for such restrictions. On the other hand, we see resistance within popular culture itself. Recall the series of strikes in Hollywood: screenwriters were outraged that their work was being handed over to neural networks. It all started with those who performed technical tasks—writing out scene details—but quickly spread to major writers and actors. Hollywood “stalled” for several months, defending its right to work. It turns out that artificial intelligence today is caught in a vise of restrictions from two sides at once: both government censorship and protests from professional communities.
Alexander Dugin: Of course. First, it’s interesting that many programmers at major Western companies are deliberately sabotaging the development of artificial intelligence simply to avoid being fired—this is already a well-known fact.
I think it won’t be long before films made by AI are on par with traditional ones. Scripts are already being written, and today anyone can write their own prompt, adjust the parameters, and watch a movie they’ve “ordered” themselves. You no longer need to be an actor or have a massive budget—all you need is access to a computer and the power of modern technology.
Host: I completely agree with you. Coming home in the evening after work and saying, “I want a movie like this, with myself in the lead role, in such-and-such a genre.” The only issue is the speed of generation. Right now it still takes a long time, which is why it hasn’t become a mass phenomenon. But as soon as the process becomes instantaneous—everything will change.
Alexander Dugin: And this is an exclusively technical issue. Computers are developing rapidly, and soon operations will speed up millions of times over. But I mean something else. You’re right: China maintains its technological sovereignty. It has its own models—Qwen and a number of others. China has built an artificial intelligence system that is independent of the West, compact, and highly efficient.
Moreover, China has genuinely ensured that training—that very “learning”—takes place within a sovereign context. They block liberal and Western propaganda, preventing it from entering their databases. But this won’t last long. The problem inherent in AI runs much deeper than these correct and necessary technological steps. It is a problem of intelligence and thinking in general.
And here, China—which in many ways still looks to the West—will be faced with the need to make an intellectual leap. I am in close contact with Chinese thinkers and analysts, including those in the field of AI, and I see that they are beginning to realize that the development of “reasoning” (the ability to reason) and the advent of AGI could render their current, rather crude censorship obsolete.
In the West, liberals and globalists are currently acting crudely, simply censoring artificial intelligence. The Chinese are responding with their own sovereign project. But sovereign thinking is a much deeper category, and they are only just beginning to approach this problem, not yet having reached the necessary level.
We in Russia, however, are fundamentally lagging behind in this regard. We try to follow both the one and the other: we’ll buy technology from one, borrow methodology from the other. So far, this is merely import substitution, not the creation of our own artificial intelligence. We must not begin with imitation or catch-up practices. We must truly awaken a philosophical consciousness in our country. This is possible—Russian people are very talented and profound; they have simply been almost artificially turned into morons by decades of degrading policies in culture and education.
If we awaken in society a passion for philosophy and a desire to think, we will gain incredible advantages in solving the most complex metaphysical problem of AI. We must start at the top—with intelligence itself. Only then will we have a chance to solve the problem of artificial intelligence. This is a nonlinear process. This is precisely what requires our utmost attention, for it is a matter of our security and sovereignty.
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AI is becoming more than just a technological tool — it’s starting to influence culture, education, communication, and even the way people think about creativity and human identity. That’s why the philosophical and civilizational side of AI is such an important discussion. I use AI tools regularly for research and writing, and recently I’ve had a really positive experience with Clever Humanizer https://cleverhumanizer.ai/ . It helps make AI-assisted text sound more natural, readable, and human, especially in longer discussions and forum conversations.