Human “centrality” has repeatedly been challenged by scientific revolutions.

Each revolution faced psychological resistance, not just scientific change.

AI may be the next decentering force, challenging human uniqueness in intelligence.

Nietzsche frames the final psychological task as creating meaning without cosmic privilege.

For centuries, the West rested on a stable psychological foundation, with human beings firmly at the center of a purposeful cosmos.

The geocentric system of Aristotle and Ptolemy, in which the Sun, stars, and planets revolved around a fixed and unmoving Earth, did more than describe the heavens. It organised meaning. Humanity occupied a privileged position in creation, and the structure of the universe seemed to confirm it.

The Copernican Revolution shattered that certainty. Yet its significance was never merely astronomical. It was psychological. It obliged human beings to confront the unsettling possibility that we are not as central as we imagine.

That confrontation did not end with astronomy. Over the following centuries, humanity would endure a succession of intellectual revolutions, each removing another claim to exceptional status. The same drama may now be unfolding once again with artificial intelligence (AI).

The parallels begin with resistance. Nearly eighteen centuries before Copernicus, Aristarchus of Samos proposed that the Earth moved around the Sun. Anaxagoras similarly suggested that the Sun was not a divine object but another celestial body. Yet neither transformed humanity's understanding of itself.

The obstacle was not a lack of evidence alone. Human beings are not neutral observers of reality. We are psychologically invested in narratives that place us at the center of events, and we resist discoveries that threaten that position.

The same tendency shapes our response to AI. The possibility that machines might perform tasks once regarded as uniquely human has been dawning for decades. Yet many people continue to........

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