The AI-Induced Subjectivity Crisis Series, Paper 1: The Formation of an AI–Human Cognitive Feedback Structure: A New Model of Cognitive Closure and Its Epochal Significance

This paper constitutes Paper 1 of the AI-Induced Subjectivity Crisis Series. With the widespread adoption of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in everyday contexts, the relationship between humans, knowledge, cognition, and action is undergoing a structural transformation. Existing academic and public discussions have largely concentrated on issues of efficiency, intelligence levels, labor displacement, or ethical risk, while comparatively little attention has been devoted to how AI may be reshaping the internal structure through which human cognition is formed, revised, and stabilized. This paper advances a central argument: the historical significance of AI does not primarily lie in its potential to replace or outperform human thinking, but in the fact that it introduces, for the first time, a sustainable non-human feedback object into individual cognition. Through this structural shift, a cognitive closure characterized by “execution–feedback–revision” becomes operable at the individual level, rather than remaining fragmented or episodic. This change constitutes a structural breakpoint in the history of human cognition, rather than a technological upgrade within a continuous evolutionary trajectory. The paper first examines the long-standing absence and limitations of feedback pathways in traditional human cognitive systems. It then proposes a human–AI cognitive recursive model to describe the newly formed feedback structure and argues for its historical irreducibility. Finally, it discusses the broader implications of this structural transformation for cognitive differentiation, knowledge production, and individual developmental trajectories.