APQ - APPON PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Artificial intelligence has become a defining feature of late modernity, reshaping communication, education, healthcare, governance, employment, and economic life while changing how individuals and institutions produce knowledge, make decisions, and exercise authority. Yet discussion of AI often remains centred on technical innovation and commercial application, leaving insufficient attention to the philosophical questions generated by its growing influence on human life. This paper examines why philosophy is indispensable to the understanding and responsible governance of artificial intelligence. Drawing on Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Martin Heidegger, Luciano Floridi, Shannon Vallor, and selected African philosophers, it analyses AI in relation to the ethical questions of responsibility, fairness, autonomy, and human dignity; the ontological questions of personhood, agency, identity, and human uniqueness; and the epistemological questions of knowledge, truth, justification, and trust. The paper further situates these questions within the conditions of late modernity, particularly reflexivity, manufactured risk, institutional dependence, and social fluidity. It argues that technical expertise and regulation, though necessary, cannot by themselves determine what AI ought to do, what forms of human life should be protected, or what values should guide technological development. Philosophy is therefore a critical necessity for ensuring that artificial intelligence serves human dignity, justice, responsible agency, and the common good

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