Abstract
This paper investigates the interaction between ideology and AI. Amid a fragmented ideological landscape, it examines AI in the context of competing ideologies, proposing three hypotheses. First, AI is shaped by competing ideological currents — utopianism, utilitarianism, and hybridism — reflecting geopolitical, market, and policy contexts characterised by paradoxes, rapid progress, and asymmetrical power. Second, drawing on Aristotle’s notion of potentiality, it argues that AI’s key trait is its capacity to assume forms aligned with ideological interests, thereby making bias inherent. Third, it suggests that ideologies thrive from AI’s potentiality bias, enabling them to stabilise on fragmented ideological bases, akin to Columbus’s egg. The paper concludes that AI’s perception, design, deployment, and use are shaped by ideological narratives, which frame expected and unexpected outcomes, classify benefits and harms, and structure public and societal responses to AI.