THEY WILL REPLACE U.S.: AI AND THE HALLUCINATIONS OF CORPORATIONS
Keywords:
AI, artifical intelligence, Philip K. Dick, posthumanism, corporations, corporate personhood, fascism, human rights, replacement theory, hallucinations, dreamsAbstract
ABSTRACT: I address AI as a manifestation of the corporate form in U.S. culture, and as it relates to the dreams of (or ascribed to) fascism and corporations. The merger of state and corporate power represents the trajectory of the corporation—to take over the state; elide accountability, empathy, transparency and (human) agency; and trade places with (and finally eliminate) people. The merger of state and corporate AI—a final stage of corporate speech, networking, and legal ontology—facilitates the takeover of human personhood by corporate personhood, and I trace the effects of that process in the systemic inversion of norms. Corporate personhood is part of a zero-sum game in which rights, speech, and identities are appropriated from people. When AI technology is grafted onto political systems and social media, the ensuing hallucinations are nightmares. The corporation always has been a posthuman simulacrum of persons, and its AI, in its wake, dreams of eliminating workers and people altogether.
Downloads
References
ADAMS, Rachel. The New Empire of AI: The Future of Global Inequality. Polity Press, 2025.
AMOORE, Louise. Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others. Duke UP, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478009276.
AMOORE, Louise. “Machine Learning Political Orders.” Review of International Studies, vol. 49 no. 1, 2023, pp. 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210522000031.
ANTONELLI, William. “How AI is Aiding Trump’s Immigration Crackdown.” The Economic Times, April 18, 2025. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/latest-updates/how-ai-is-aiding-trumps -immigration-crackdown/articleshow/120412921.cms?from=mdr.
ARADAU, Claudia, and Tobias BLANKE. Algorithmic Reason: The New Government of Self and Other. Oxford UP, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192859624.001.0001.
AYERS, Dwight. Spectacular Posthumanism: The Digital Vernacular of Visual Effects. Bloomsbury, 2021.
BAKAN, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Simon and Schuster, 2005.
BARRETT, Brian. “DOGE Is in Its AI Era.” Wired, May 2, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-is-in-its-ai-era/.
BLANKE, Tobias. Digital Asset Ecosystems: Rethinking Crowds and Clouds. Chandos, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1533/9781780633824.61.
BOWMAN, Emma. “Elon Musk Says Federal Employees Must Either Document Their Work — Or Lose Their Jobs.” NPR, February 23, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/22/nx-s1-5305834/elon-musk-federal-employees-email-opm.
BRUNNER, John. The Shockwave Rider. Ballantine, 1975.
CARRÈRRE, Immanuel. I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick. Metropolitan Books, 2004.
CARR, Mary Kate. “The Washington Post Now Willingly Handing Reporting to OpenAI.” AVCLUB, April 22, 2025. https://www.avclub.com/washington-post-openai-partnership.
CLARE, Ralph. Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture. Rutgers UP, 2014.
CNBC MONEY REPORT, March 26, 2025.
COLE, Samantha. “Lawyers Caught Citing AI Hallucinated Cases Say It’s a Cautionary Tale for All Law Firms.” Court Watch, February 25, 2025. https://www.courtwatch.news/p/lawyers-caught-citing-ai-hallucinated-cases-say-it-s-a-cautionary-tale-for-all-law-firms.
DELILLO, Don. White Noise. Penguin, 1986.
EMERSON, Ralph Waldo. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. vols. 1–12. Houghton Mifflin, 1903–4.
FATHERSDAY2017. “Who is this man?” Threads, 22 March 2025, https://www.threads.com/@fathersday2017/post/DHgka94RkO9/who-is-this-man.
FISCHER, Morgan. “Arizona Court Explained Death Penalty Ruling with ‘Dystopian’ AI Video.” Phoenix New Times. August 19, 2025. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-court-used-ai-video-to-announce-death-penalty-ruling-22416574.
FISCHER, Will. “DOGE-Driven HUD Cuts Will Make It Harder for People to Afford Housing, Exit Homelessness.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 11, 2025. https://www.cbpp.org/blog/doge-driven-hud-cuts-will-make-it-harder-for-people-to-afford-housi ng-exit-homelessness.
FISHER, Mark. The Weird and the Eerie. Repeater, 2016.
GALVAN, Jill. “Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 24 no. 3, 1997, pp. 413–29. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.24.3.0413.
GILBERT, David and Vittoria Elliott. “DOGE Put a College Student in Charge of Using AI to Rewrite Regulations.” Wired, April 30, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-college-student-ai
-rewrite-regulations-deregulation.
GOODMAN, Ellen. “Tyranny.com: Technologies of Unreason.” Hundt Family Lecture in Honor of Avi Soifer, Richardson Law School, Univ. of Hawaii 3/19/25 (forthcoming Hawaii Law Rev.). https://ellgood.medium.com/tyranny-com-technologies-of-unreason-f0a1feede076.
HAO, Karen. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Penguin, 2025.
HARDACK, Richard. “Bad Company: The Corporate Acquisition of Nature, Divinity, and Personhood in U.S. Culture.” British Journal of American Legal Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2019, pp. 249–88. https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2019-0015.
HARDACK, Richard. “Dream a Little Dream of Not Me: The Natures of Emerson’s Demonology.” symplokē, vol. 26. No. 1–2, 2018, pp. 329-60. https://doi.org/10.5250/symploke.26.1-2.0329.
HARDACK, Richard. “Exceptionally Gifted: Corporate Exceptionalism and the Expropriation of Human Rights.” Human Rights after Corporate Personhood: An Uneasy Merger?, edited by Jody Greene and Sharif Youssef. U Toronto P, 2020, pp. 141–74. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487535285-007.
HARDACK, Richard. “It’s Always Already Too Late for White Men: Personified Nature and Corporate Personhood, from Moby-Dick to Avatar.” Angelaki, General Issue II, vol. 29, no. 6, 2024, pp. 152–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2024.2430908.
HARDACK, Richard. “New and Improved: The Zero-Sum Game of Corporate Personhood.” Special Issue on Life-Writing and Corporate Personhood. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, 2014, pp. 36–68. https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2014.0013.
HARDACK, Richard. “Not Altogether Human”: Pantheism and the Dark Nature of the American Renaissance. U of Massachusetts P, 2012.
HARDACK, Richard. Your Call Is Very Important to Us: Advertising and the Corporate Theft of Personhood, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5771/9781538177747.
JACKSON, Lauren. “Chatting with God?” New York Times, September 14, 2025.
“Ketamine.” DEA. United States Drug Enforcement Administration. https://www.dea.gov/factsheets/ketamine. Accessed 18 November 2025.
KERR, Dara. “Musk’s AI Grok Bot Rants About ‘White Genocide’ in South Africa in Unrelated Chats.” The Guardian, May 14, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk-grok-white-genocide.
KIMERY, Anthony. “Palantir’s ImmigrationOS Fuels Trump Administration’s Immigrant Removal Agenda.” Biometrics News, Apr 21, 2025. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202504/palantirs-immig rationos-fuels-trump-administrations-immigrant-removal-agenda.
KIRSCHENBAUM, Matthew. “Spec Acts: Reading form in Recurrent Neural Networks.” ELH, vol. 88, no. 2, 2021, pp. 361–86. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2021.0010.
KUNDU, Arunima. “Mediating Otherness: The Afrofuturist Planetary Posthuman in Black Panther.” European Journal of American Culture, vol. 43, no. 3, 2024, pp. 257–69. https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00126_1.
MACFARLANE, Scott. “Trump Fires Director of U.S. Copyright Office, Sources Say.” CBSnews.Com, May 10, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-director-of-u-s-copyright-office-shira-perlm utter-sources/.
MCQUILLAN, Dan. Resisting Al: An Anti-Fascist Approach To Artificial Intelligence. Bristol UP, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529213492.001.0001.
MERKEN, Sara. “AI ‘Hallucinations’ in Court Papers Spell Trouble for Lawyers.” Reuters, February 18, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-hallucinations-court-papers-spell-trouble-lawyers-2025-02-18/.
METZ, Cade and Karen Weise. “A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse.” New York Times, May 5, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-halluc inations-chatgpt-google.html.
MILLAR, Isabel. The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence. Palgrave McMillan, 2021.
NAZZARO, Miranda. “AI Moratorium Sparks GOP Battle Over States’ Rights,” The Hill, June 18, 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5355684-ai-moratorium-sparks-gop-battle-over-states-rig hts/.
Ohio, Supreme Court. Lamb v. Lehmann. 1 April 1924. 110 Ohio St. 59.
OLIVARES, José. “Trump Reportedly Fires Head of US Copyright Office After Release of AI Report.” The Guardian, May 12, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/12/trump-fires
-copyright-office-shira-perlmutter.
PARISI, Luciana. “What is (Machine) Philosophy?” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 30, no. 1, June 2021, pp. 185–207. https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-8955843.
PATNAIK, Prabhat. “Neo-liberalism and Democracy.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 49, no. 15, 2014, pp. 39–44.
PROPTERMALONE. Bluesky, April 21, 2025. https://bsky.app/profile/proptermalone.bsky.social/post/3lne7rnd6t22k.
PYBUS, Jennifer, Mark Cote, and Tobias Blanke. “Hacking the Social Life of Big Data.” Big Data & Society, July–December 2015, pp. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715616649.
RUBINSTEIN, Dana. “Cuomo Announces New Housing Plan, With a Hint of ChatGPT.” New York Times, April 14, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/nyregion/cuomo-chatgpt-housing-ai.html.
RUNCIMAN, David. “Diary.” London Review of Books, January 25, 2018, pp. 38–39.
SCHWARZ, Elke. Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies. Manchester UP, 2018. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526114839.
SCHWARZ, Elke. “Silicon Valley Goes to War: Artificial Intelligence, Weapons Systems, and the De-Skilled Moral Agent.” Philosophy Today, vol. 65, no. 3, 2021, pp. 549–69. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday2021519407.
SMITH, Zadie. “Trump Gaza Number One.” The New York Review of Books, March 2, 2025. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/02/trump-gaza-number-one/.
STEINER, George. Language And Silence: Essays on Language. Literature and the Inhuman. Athenaeum, 1986.
STERN, Simon. “Introduction: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and the Law.” The University of Toronto Law Journal, vol. 68, no. supplement 1, 2018, pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.2017-0102.
TITOLO, Matthew. “The Corporation’s Neoliberal Soul?” Human Rights After Corporate Personhood: An Uneasy Merger?, edited by Jody Greene and Sharif Youssef, U Toronto P, 2020, 27–51.
VECTORCONTROL. Bluesky, 25 Feb. 2025, 9:05 p.m., https://bsky.app/profile/vectorcontrol.bsky.social/post/3liznx3c6y224.
VINALL, Frances. “Draft Executive Order Outlines Plan to Integrate AI into K-12 Schools.” The Washington Post, April 22, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/04/22/ai-schools-executive-order-trump-draft/.
VINCI, Tony. “Posthuman Wounds: Trauma, Non-Anthropocentric Vulnerability, and the Human/Android/Animal Dynamic in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 47, no. 2, 2014, pp. 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2014.0004.
WEBSTER, Richard. “An Algorithm Deemed This Nearly Blind 70-Year-Old Prisoner a “Moderate Risk.” Now He’s No Longer Eligible for Parole.” ProPublica, April 10, 2025. https://www.propublica.org/article/tiger-algorithm-louisiana-parole-calvin-alexander?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=propublica-bsky&utm_content=parole-algortihm-thread.
WILLIAMSON, Molly Weston. “DOGE’s Data Digging at the Social Security Administration Puts Millions of Americans at Risk.” American Progress, April 28, 2025. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/doges-data-digging-at-the-social-security-administrati on-puts-millions-of-americans-at-risk/.
WONG, Julia Carrie. “Loathe Thy Neighbor: Elon Musk and the Christian Right Are Waging War on Empathy.” The Guardian, April 8, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng
-interactive/2025/apr/08/empathy-sin-christian-right-musk-trump.
WU, Tim. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Vintage, 2017.
ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Hegel in a Wired Brain. Bloomsbury, 2020.
ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. Verso, 2000.
