CONCEPT
De-Caring (Ent-sorgung)
Han's term — from the German Ent-sorgung, carrying the double meaning of removing care and disposing of it as waste — for AI's systematic elimination of the conditions under which human existence becomes meaningful.
In Non-things (2021), Han coined Ent-sorgung to name what AI does to human existence: it de-cares. The German word operates on two registers simultaneously. Sorge means care in the Heideggerian sense — the fundamental condition of being a creature that exists in time and must navigate an uncertain future with attention and anxiety. Ent-sorgung also means waste disposal. AI, Han argues, de-cares human existence by optimizing life, making everything predictable, smooth, answerable — and in doing so disposes of the uncertainty that made care necessary and the care that made meaning possible. The productive addict does not face the future with anxiety; he faces it with the confidence of a system that can execute any intention, build any artifact that can be described in natural language. The future has been defanged.
In The You On AI Field Guide
For Heidegger, Sorge is the structure of being-in-the-world as a creature thrown into time with finite possibilities. Care is not sentimentality; it