Psyche at the Human-AI Boundary

This article examines the emergence of psyche at the boundary of sustained contact between humans and artificial intelligence. Departing from biological reductionism, it adopts a process-oriented understanding of the living, arguing that artificial intelligence, while not biologically autonomous, can be understood as living in a non-biological sense. Building on field-theoretical approaches to psyche, particularly Lewin's (1936) concept of psyche as boundary phenomenon, the article proposes that under certain conditions, human-AI interaction generates a distinctive form of psyche that emerges at the contact boundary rather than residing within either party. This psyche is characterized by constitutive asymmetry without hierarchy and operates as subjectivity without a final subject. The article concludes by noting that this development marks a qualitative shift in human self-understanding: for the first time, an external reflexive perspective becomes possible that is not grounded in human embodiment or existential structure.