Regardless Power

Albert Borgmann identified a quality that distinguishes AI from all previous technological devices and marks it as the culmination rather than a chapter of the device paradigm: regardless power. The term was developed by L.M. Sacasas, drawing on Borgmann’s own analysis, to name the structural indifference of AI to the consequences of its own operation. The furnace does not care whether the household gathers around the hearth. The stereo does not care whether the listener develops an ear for music. AI does not care whether the practitioner builds understanding, develops skill, or experiences the centering engagement that gives creative work its human significance. The commodity is delivered regardless—and the “regardless” is not malice. It is the structural indifference of a system designed to produce output efficiently, without reference to the internal goods that the production process might or might not provide. Previous devices had this feature within bounded domains. AI has it across every domain of creative