CONCEPT
Replacism
Crawford's name for the metaphysical assumption that every particular thing can be substituted by its standardized double — a worldview the AI age makes both more pervasive and more consequential.
Replacism is Crawford's term for the metaphysical worldview that assumes every particular thing can be replaced by its standardized functional equivalent without significant loss. The assumption operates through what Crawford identifies as the denial of natural kinds — the refusal to recognize that there are genuine, qualitative distinctions between things that functional equivalence cannot bridge. The father's hand-written wedding toast and the AI-generated toast perform the same function, occupy the same slot, deliver the same commodity. But they are not the same thing. One bears the mark of a human being's struggle to articulate love; the other bears the mark of a statistical process that has never loved anything. Replacism is the cultural logic that treats this difference as sentimental — as a psychological preference rather than a real metaphysical distinction.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept connects Crawford's analysis of individual agency to his broader political-economic critique. If human cognitive labor can be replaced by its computational double without loss, then the