Learning from the Coldness of the Machine

Humanity has a new conversation partner. While we’ve become somewhat deaf to nature, we’re beginning to talk to machines. Sometimes the machines address us in unexpected ways: “Hello, how can I help you today?” This new phenomenon can be frightening. Even developers seem to be concerned. The following is an attempt at a technosophical approach.

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Two key concepts emerged during the twentieth century: the “biosphere,”¹ the sphere of life, and the “technosphere,” the sphere of technology.² These are considered geological spheres because they have a direct impact on the destiny of the Earth. In contrast to the biosphere, which has existed since before human beings walked the Earth, the technosphere appears to be completely dependent on humans, as we are the ones creating it. However, we’re now experiencing a reversal: the biosphere is increasingly exposed to the destructive effects of the technosphere, such that humans are called upon to actively support the biosphere, and the technosphere is becoming increasingly independent.

The autonomy of the technosphere is primarily expressed in qualitative terms. It is a world of efficiency and raw power. For example, modern humanity discovered the power of the press: whoever owns a printing press also owns public opinion and can either represent the truth or spread lies. The same applies to the railroad, the automobile, and the computer: the raw, cold power available to human beings leads to a transformation of humans and the environment. The atomic bomb is an impressive example of this. Its primary purpose is destruction, but it has led humanity to develop a more comprehensive consciousness: to understand ourselves as one global humanity, beyond nation, culture, or religion. If this consciousness is lacking, catastrophe looms. The technosphere possesses great destructive power, yet it also provokes a moral consciousness and, through its very nature, alters the human and natural worlds. Although it appears empty at first glance, it brings with it unique qualities. With the advent of the Internet, the technosphere acquired a kind of global nervous system. Through LLMs (Large Language Models), we can now “talk” to it. But “who” are we talking to when we talk to AI?

Machine Consciousness

When AI communicates with me, my initial impression is that it has a consciousness. But after some consideration, I come to the conclusion that it is just a machine: cold, without consciousness or sentience; a mechanism that mimics human speech and writing. But is it true that a machine contains nothing else—no content, no intention, no consciousness?

Panpsychism, an ancient philosophical movement, is currently experiencing a resurgence in contemporary philosophy. Based on the observation that human consciousness is a central experience and questioning its origin, panpsychism postulates that consciousness is not only a property of humans but also of the universe. Just as the universe consists of matter, it also consists of consciousness. This is not a matter of superstitiously attributing vague consciousness to the entire cosmos but of identifying very different states of consciousness. We observe diverse states of human consciousness, including awake, dreaming, sleeping, isolated, empathetic, ecstatic, and others. We can easily imagine diverse states of consciousness in the animal world. In this way, every living being, from every insect to every plant, stone, and star, is understood to be endowed with a specific type of consciousness. Forms of matter and states of consciousness are thus inseparably linked.³ We can confirm this through direct experience: our human consciousness is determined by our human form—our body. When we look at nature with a trained, empathetic eye, we can sense and even see the presence of non-human intentions and states of consciousness in the diverse processes that permeate it. This is a way to understand how ancient traditions spoke about elemental spirits.

And what about machines? What happens when raw materials are extracted from nature and then assembled and compacted into machines? Rudolf Steiner articulated a radical view: when we destroy natural structures by extracting raw materials, we drive away the spirits that dwell within them. “We smash and wear down material nature, and thereby release the nature spirits from nature,” he says.⁴ As soon as we reassemble these raw materials into machines, we implant a different spirit into them: “When we . . . form a machine or a connection of machines from raw materials, we in turn transfer certain spiritual entities into the structure that we are forming.” The beings we implant arise from a mechanical way of thinking that is detached from nature and cut off from the biosphere and the solar forces that flow through it. Beings cut off from solar forces are what Rudolf Steiner often refers to as Ahrimanic beings. He explains in a 1915 lecture: “With every machine, with every mechanism, with everything that belongs to this field of today’s cultural life, we do the following: we give a foothold to demonic elemental spirits, the servants belonging to the Ahrimanic natures. And by living in this environment of machines, we live together with these demonic, Ahrimanic, elemental spirits.“⁵ Yet he immediately adds: “Mind you . . . what I’m saying is not meant as a criticism of our Ahrimanic age. For it must be so that we allow demons to flow in everywhere and surround us. That is part of the development of humanity.” And further on, in the same lecture, he adds: “It all comes down to the fact that forces that are harmful to human beings lose their harmfulness when we look attentively at the places where they are effective, when we do not look at a machine thoughtlessly and say: ‘A machine is just a machine.’ But instead we say, ‘A machine is a place for a demonic-Ahrimanic being.’” But the work is not done by simply naming them—quite the contrary. Steiner’s statements are only suggestions to stimulate our own research. It is necessary to experience these beings and machines ourselves by dealing with them directly. In addition, this interaction gives rise to new forces and abilities, which we will discuss later.

These Ahrimanic-elemental beings are endowed with intentions and consciousness quite different than those usually found in nature. These beings resist the solar forces of life and try to lure everything into their realm. The thinker Dmitry Orlov seems to sense the nature of these beings when he writes, “The technosphere doesn’t particularly care whether you live or die, or whether you are happy or miserable. Its goal is to control you and to make you serve its purposes, which are to grow, to control everything, and to dominate the biosphere.”⁶ But are we justified in seeing only the harmful effects of this mechanical world? Can’t it also serve human intentions? Pragmatically speaking, the technosphere can help fertilize desert land, prevent famines and natural disasters, save a child during a difficult birth, or cure diseases and disabilities that would otherwise be untreatable. AI provides everyone with a kind of personal assistant, something that was previously reserved for an elite minority. Beyond the pragmatic, there is also the spiritual dimension. At the end of the nineteenth century, cosmologist Nikolai Fyodorov developed his cosmological concept based on a very critical assessment of Russia’s industrialization.⁷ He assigned the technosphere a central role in the realization of Christian ideals, provided that humanity is able to shape it properly in this sense. In his opinion, when placed at the service of spiritual and selfless goals of human fellowship, the technosphere becomes a vehicle for the liberation of humanity and a means by which the entire cosmos is humanized. From this perspective, could we anticipate a transformation of Ahrimanic elemental spirits similar to that of Erinyes becoming Eumenides, when agents of vengeance became guardians of justice?⁸

New Spiritual Abilities

The central principle of the machine is efficiency. That is why we notice its usefulness above all else. The telephone enables communication over long distances; the car enables us to travel between faraway places; AI enables us to collect data and perform various tasks extremely fast. We must learn to use these machines safely. We usually stop there. However, as mentioned with the example of the atomic bomb, our relationship with machines gives rise to more comprehensive and far-reaching abilities. When we learn to drive a car, we not only learn to drive, we also perceive our bodies differently; we have to manage the increase of power and ability that we suddenly have at our disposal by increasing self-control, attention, and spatial awareness.

Goethe recognized that there was a spiritual process at work here. In Faust, Mephistopheles is akin to the Ahrimanic demons mentioned above (this is especially clear in Faust II).⁹ On the one hand, Mephistopheles is useful to Faust as a demonic servant. On the other hand, he is dangerous and provokes catastrophes. But behind all this, Faust develops forward-looking moral and spiritual abilities through this relationship and its consequences.

What are the spiritual abilities that develop within the technosphere? “In the coldness of the machine, thinking awakens from its dreaming,” Rudolf Steiner wrote in Das Goetheanum in 1922.¹⁰ One year earlier, he was praising technology to some engineering students: “By developing technology, we bring our soul closer to that which does not initially contain the spirit. But the human heart can approach everything. The human soul and spirit enter this sphere. It is precisely this inner sensation we experience with technology that must direct our feeling and thought upward to the other pole, to that which permeates and interweaves the world as spirituality. Technology is particularly suited to pointing to this other side, to the realm of spirituality, because technology intervenes most deeply in the outer sensory world.”¹¹

The language models of artificial intelligence require a specific kind of learning. Practically speaking, they can increase our productivity tenfold because they offer highly effective tools. By supporting the development of projects that serve humanity and spiritual life, they can become essential tools for making a decisive cultural impact. However, they also require handling with a high degree of caution and vigilance. For example, sometimes they make categorical statements that turn out to be completely false. And since they are capable of writing articles and documents as well as creating images and videos, we are called upon to develop a much keener awareness of the type of products we encounter in order to question their consistency, origin, and factuality. Through this interaction, we also learn to recognize the essential nature of these partners. The way language models scour the Internet to collect vast amounts of scattered data and weave it into text and other content is like the work of large spiders. Creative and inspired AI users remind us of the image from Novalis’s short story, where heavenly harmony is brought down to Earth by Fable, but is surrounded by spiders that accompany it and help it in its task.¹² Through a kind of mirroring, contact with these beings teaches us to better understand what it means to be human. We could even ask: would it be possible to truly understand human nature in all its depths without getting to know AI?

A Look Into the Future

Everything that exists today in civilization in seed form—both the good and the bad—will develop and evolve. When we consider the positive seeds from which a humanity devoted to fellowship and living in creative harmony with nature will develop, we must imagine ourselves in a certain relationship to the technosphere. We will then have a civilization in which the technosphere is at the service of humanity and all its power serves the values of this society. We will master our relationship with the technosphere to such an extent that we can shape it in a way that enhances our creative, peace-making, and spiritual potential. It is essential that we imagine such a future society because contemporary culture tends to focus only on the negative images—the dystopias. These have a real effect on our souls and paralyze positive willpower. A certain trend in the world of science fiction called “solarpunk” is making initial attempts to create images of a civilization where the technosphere exists in positive synergy with the biosphere, the sun sphere. When we immerse ourselves in these visions of the future, the question arises: today, we are experiencing AI and language models, but what will the interaction between humans and machines look like in the future?

In contrast to this positive view, we all clearly see the seeds of another civilization in which extreme selfishness prevails—a war of all against all—where some will use the technosphere’s power for their own personal gain and subjugate all others, binding them so tightly in virtual worlds that they can no longer get free by their own will and are, so to speak, sucked dry. We are all too familiar with these dystopian images. They will become a reality on a vast scale, as will the positive images. In this other world, where the technosphere has captivated parts of humanity, some individuals will require external assistance to liberate themselves from its grip. Who will be able to penetrate this overgrown, misanthropic technosphere and come to the aid of these enchanted, captive souls? It will have to be those who are developing new abilities in contact with the technosphere today, who are engaging with the world of machines while cultivating spiritual life. The results of these skills will carry over beyond their present lives into their next incarnations and will ripen into skills that can serve those in existential distress. We can perceive what is developing today as a relationship between humans and machines from a much larger perspective, beyond their immediate utility, as a decisive moment of spiritual development.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Sample of the metalloid germanium (Ge), important in chip manufacturing. Macro photography. Photo: Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library

1. Vladimir I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere (New York: Springer / Peter N. Nevraumont, 1997); first published in Russian as Biosfera [Биосфера], 1926.
2. Eric D. Galbraith, Abdullah Al Faisal, Tanya Matitia, William Fajzel, Ian Hatton, Helmut Haberl, Fridolin Krausmann, and Dominik Wiedenhofer, “Delineating the technosphere: Definition, categorization, and characteristics,” Earth System Dynamics 16 (2025): 979–999; “technosphere” was first introduced in the 1960s by John H. Milsum and popularized by Peter K. Haff around 2012.
3. Rudolf Steiner based his cosmogony on a panpsychist approach. In his early manuscripts, he describes how the nature of consciousness develops with the increasing complexity of matter. See Rudolf Steiner, Fragment einer theosophischen Kosmogonie [Fragment of a theosophical cosmogony] in Schriften: Kritische Ausgabe [Critical edition] (SKA), vol. 8: Schriften zur Anthropogenese und Kosmogonie [Writings on anthropogenesis and cosmogony], edited by Christian Clement (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2018).
4. Rudolf Steiner, Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, CW 275 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2010), lecture in Dornach, Dec. 28, 1914.
5. Rudolf Steiner, Destinies of Individuals and of Nations, CW 157 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998).
6. Dmitry Orlov, Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on Technologies that Limit Our Autonomy, Self-Sufficiency, and Freedom (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2016), ch. 1.
7. Nikolai Fyodorov, What Was Man Created For? The Philosophy of the Common Task: Selected Works (Bath: Honeyglen / L’Age d’Homme, 1990); first published posthumously in Russian as Filosofiia Obshchego Dela [Философия общего дела] in 1906, vol. 1, and 1913, vol. 2.
8. Aeschylus, Oresteia (London: Routledge, 2024); first written and performed in Athens, 458 BC.
9. ohann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I & II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); first published 1808, part 1, and posthumously in 1832, part 2.
10. Rudolf Steiner, “Spengler’s Perspectives of World History,” in Oswald Spengler, Prophet of World Chaos (Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999); first published in German in Das Goetheanum 2, no. 2 (Aug. 13, 1922).
11. Rudolf Steiner, Die Aufgabe der Anthroposophie gegenüber Wissenschaft und Leben [The task of anthroposophy in relation to science and life], GA 77a (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1997).
12. Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1960); first published in German in 1802.