Decerebration
Origin: Term from the public debate on AI
Definition
Decerebration refers, in contemporary public debate, to the thesis that generative AI constitutes an enterprise of mass cognitive dispossession — that AI response systems would systematically impoverish users’ thinking, reducing their capacity for autonomous reflection. The term, originally medical (“to destroy the brain or sever its connections”), is used metaphorically and provocatively.
I take up this term not to adopt it, but also to discuss its limits and slippages.
In my writings
The thesis of mass decerebration raises a problem of responsibility that cannot be accepted without nuance. It points to a single culprit: Big Tech and their systems. It absolves the user of responsibility. This absolution is a trap: “it’s not your fault” implies an absence of self-questioning and awareness of the situation, the risks, the biases.
While technology companies bear responsibility, reducing the problem to their sole ill will amounts to infantilizing the user. It is precisely this pattern of thinking that makes us more vulnerable.
The problem remains real: operative dispossession exists, as do the risks of proletarianization. The response cannot be solely political or regulatory — it also requires digital autonomy, meaning the individual and collective reclaiming of control over our uses.