Last night, as I looked out of the window in Berlin at the Französischer Dom, I felt a moment of Getroffenheit—a perception of my own perception in the midst of the ordinary. In the Alltäglichkeit–an everydayness–, as Heidegger so aptly describes it in Being and Time.

The being of the human—the Dasein—unfolds “initially and for the most part in the Alltäglichkeit.” Not in the extraordinary, but in the banal; not in the spectacular, but in everyday dealings, in the use of tools, and in the world of Mitsein, our being-with-others, does what we are truly come to light. A hammer is not first of all an “object” with properties (vorhanden), but it disappears in its use—it is zuhanden. Only when the hammer breaks does it step forward as an object for consideration.

Today, AGI increasingly takes over our “hammering activities”: writing texts, ordering data, preparing decisions. It becomes our new hammer—always zuhanden, in the background, unnoticed and taken for granted. But unlike the tool of wood and iron, AGI is not a mute thing. It anticipates, decides, develops further—and because it is digital, it is in a sense immortal.

“Everydayness is a mode of Being of Dasein, in which it is proximally and for the most part.”

Yet this very Alltäglichkeit is endangered today. Heidegger speaks of the fall into das Man (“one”): we do what “one” does, think what “one” thinks, live in the mode of inconspicuousness. With Artificial General Intelligence, this problem could intensify radically.

Alltäglichkeit does not simply vanish—it is colonized.
The “man” is digitized: man writes with AI, man thinks with AI, man lives in an everydayness shaped by systems. AGI acts invisibly in the background, always zuhanden, without us noticing. The risk? Our everyday life is algorithmically shaped, das Man takes on a new, digital form.

“Will Dasein, under the rule of technology, still be able to inhabit its own Alltäglichkeit—or will this be finally swallowed by the systems of das Man?”

Here lies the decision for the future of humanity, for our continued Lebendigkei–the very liveliness of life in itself. In the Zuhandenheit of the tool, the essence of Dasein shows itself not in the spectacular but in use, in action, in being-in-the-world—in that perception of our own perception, in Alltäglichkeit itself.

If AGI frees humans from routine, it could create space for authentic existence: for reflection, for care, for play, for a new relationship to the world. But this presupposes that we preserve our Menschsein. And here lies both the risk and the responsibility in our relation to an externalized, general artificial intelligence.

That is why Florian Neukart and I have begun to reflect on the development of AHI – Artificial Human Intelligence. An intelligence not for automation, where we surrender agency and authority to algorithms, but as an extension of the human through digital intelligence. A mirror that leads us back to presence. An instance that takes us by the hand, so that in the maelstrom of technologies we do not lose access to our perception of our own perception.

We go so far as to say: the externalized creation of a General Artificial Intelligence—a “God from the machine”—could be the greatest existential threat to our species. For this reason, we see the creation of an Artificial Human Intelligence as indispensable for the continuation of our human story.

For in truth, as I felt yesterday before the Dom, everything is already here.
The ordinary is the extraordinary.
And so, the greatest challenge of our time lies in preserving the Alltäglichkeit. For in it rests our Lebendigkeit—the very foundation of what it means to be human.