Kant Machine: Critical Philosophy after AI

by Yuk Hui, Michael Marder (Series Editor), Giovanbattista Tusa (Series Editor)

Rethinking the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in the age of artificial intelligence.

What could be called an intelligent machine? Are machines capable of being moral? Does an algorithm for perpetual peace exist? In this groundbreaking new work, Yuk Hui considers how current debates on artificial intelligence echo historical philosophical discussions about the workings of the mind, with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant emerging as a lens through which to consider the ethical and political implications of AI and robotics in a new light.

Addressing fundamental questions around machine intelligence and morality, transcendental idealism and learning, and the metaphysics of machines, the history of AI and Kantian ideas are expertly woven together alongside an array of figures in the histories of technology and from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Alan Turing to Hubert Dreyfus and Jacques de Vaucanson.

In asking how we can understand AI in light of the challenges Kant posed to both rationalism and empiricism, and how revisiting Kant can help us better comprehend the nature and limitations of contemporary technologies, Kant Machine is an essential critical contribution both to Kant studies and to the philosophy of digital technology.

142 pages, Hardcover

Published January 22, 2026

About the author

Yuk Hui studied Computer Engineering and Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong and Goldsmiths College in London, with a focus on philosophy of technology. He currently teaches at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Between 2012 and 2018 he taught at the institute of philosophy and art (IPK) and Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media of the Leuphana University Lüneburg where he wrote his habilitation thesis. He is also a visiting professor at the China Academy of Art where he teaches a master class with Bernard Stiegler every spring. Since 2019 he is Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media of City University in Hong Kong. Previous to that, he was a research associate at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Media (ICAM), postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Research and Innovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a visiting scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin. He is initiator of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, an international network which facilitates researches and collaborations on philosophy and technology. Hui has published on philosophy of technology and media in periodicals such as Research in Phenomenology, Metaphilosophy, Parrhesia, Angelaki, Theory Culture and Society, Cahiers Simondon, Deleuze Studies, Intellectica, Krisis, Implications Philosophiques, Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie, Techné, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Appareil, New Formations,Parallax, etc. He is editor (with Andreas Broeckmann) of 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (2015), and author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (prefaced by Bernard Stiegler, University of Minnesota Press, March 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic, December 2016), and Recursivity and Contingency (Rowman & Littlefield International, February 2019). His writings have been translated into a dozen languages.

Reviews

[Malik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a disappointment. It is not a Kantian AI book in the sense that is structures AI through a critical lens.

I except a deeper and clearer exploration of the ontological structures of machines, since the author explicitly describes the three Kantian question within the introduction. After that point, up to which I was excited to continue reading, the author drops the ball by going into a deep monological description of the three Kantian Critiques.

My question is: Who is this book for? For philosophy post-docs or for the AI engineer? If it is targeted at the former, then he should give us a few guidelines on the Kantian conception of freedom (which he sees as self evident as has been described in the Critique of Practical Reason) and then analyse AI. If it is for the latter, then it needs to be toned down A LOT.

The language use itself is messy and the constant use of citations gives me the impression that Hui is unsure in his conclusions. This is connected to the work of the editors. I’d like to see the pre-edited version if they allowed this mess to be published!

The worst part was the equalization of AI harms and successes by saying that its functions are“pharmacological” (p.78). The current negative impacts are just be accepted on a utilitarian scale. He brings forth a fatalism that is unimaginable!

One could have summarized content to 10 pages with adequate footnotes. Seems more like the work of an undergrad who is desperate to fill words and present their knowledge of the Kantian works. Hui attempts to neither be a sceptic nor a dogmatist but remains as a bland nothing.

If our goal now should be to look at critical philosophy again - which the author wants us to do - then I don’t know why I’ve read the work at all. Wasn’t that the point of this book?

My day is ruined!