Digitalization, AI and the rise of techno-religion: Transhumanist promises and the challenge to Enlightenment

Digitalization, currently spearheaded by artificial intelligence, not only disenchants but also re-enchants societies, giving rise to a transhumanism-shaped techno-religion that contests prevailing interpretations of the Enlightenment project in Western societies. This article draws on a long-term perspective on media change and a sociotechnical conception of the digitalization of societies as the Digital Trinity: the co-evolutionary interplay of datafication, algorithmization, and platformization. It argues that this trinity of transformative forces is marked by a transhumanist reinterpretation of Enlightenment and exhibits corresponding techno-religious features. These features are revealed both in societal functions (e.g., handling contingencies, contributing to sensemaking) and in individual experiences of digitalization (e.g., the feedback loop of sacralizing technology and the self). Transhumanist visions of a technically controllable human evolution and transcendence replicate and reinforce belief structures traditionally associated with organized religions. Drawing on critical-theoretical readings of Kant, the article demonstrates how the rise of this techno-religion and its underlying transhumanist reinterpretation of Enlightenment stand in tension with the prevailing Kantian conception of Enlightenment, whose emancipatory aim is to foster “maturity” through critical reason, rationality, and human autonomy. In response, it suggests a next wave of Enlightenment that moves beyond the anthropocentric 18th-century model by combining the safeguarding of traditional values with the overcoming of recognized shortcomings and adaptation to today's highly networked digital realities. It argues for curbing the mystical side of digitalization; reclaiming public discourse from transhumanist mythologies; and reframing human self-understanding within a networked, more ecocentric perspective, for example, by resisting the strong anthropomorphization of technological systems.