Philosophy of the Machines - A Manifesto for Humans in the Age of Artificial Agents

We must reconsider our relationship with machines as artificial intelligence evolves from task-based support to autonomous or assisted generation. Generation is not creation.Human intelligence–our only known model –is the sole benchmark for evaluating AI. Yet, we lack rigorous comparison standards because we do not fully understand the internal mechanisms of human intelligence. Perhaps it is more appropriate to speak of AI in simplified terms–as something that, under certain conditions, emulates what we commonly perceive as intelligent behavior. But even that remains uncertain.To call a circuit board “intelligent,” in my view, is merely an exercise in measuring how well emulation mimics what we recognize as intelligence, based solely on the only model we know: our own.Let us not forget that we still lack a universally accepted definition of intelligence, let alone a definition of thinking, or even a deeper understanding of the complex nature of consciousness.Let us also remember that over the last 80 years of computing and automation, the dominant discipline for solving problems has not been AI, but engineering. Engineering provides the methodologies, mental models, and validation frameworks we use to design and deploy systems. AI extends this legacy — and at the same time, disrupts it, introducing new epistemic and ethical challenges that cannot be resolved solely through efficiency.This manifesto examines why and how AI must evolve in tandem with human cognition, roles, and ethics. It argues that AI demands more than technical or economic scrutiny—it calls for a philosophical revolution in understanding intelligence, responsibility, and human-machine interaction. At the heart of this transition lies the need to articulate a new intellectual discipline: the Philosophy of the Machines.In a world increasingly divided between the celebration of individual agency amplified by AI tools and the calls for stricter regulatory frameworks to govern “machine autonomy”, the Philosophy of the Machines proposes a third way: a foundational philosophical inquiry into how machines reshape the conditions of thinking, acting, and ethical responsibility itself.This is not a technical manual, nor a speculative vision. It is a conceptual framework designed to reframe the logic of AI adoption, shifting from defining efficiency, value, and oversight to allocating agency in automated systems. The Δ–η–ζ model introduced here is not a turnkey tool but a thinking scaffold — a way to build more realistic, ethical, and human-aligned business cases for AI and GenAI. This manifesto aims to open the debate:•What kind of intelligence are we building?•What kind of humans must we become in response?•And how do we share responsibility with systems we no longer fully control?This manifesto is neither techno-optimistic nor purely regulatory; it is ontological, epistemological, and systemic, offering a new intellectual framework for the Age of Artificial Agents.This manifesto invites reflection on these questions not as an academic exercise, but as a call to reshape the human condition in the age of artificial agents.