Lorenzo Arico
University of Bologna
My aim in this paper is to explore AI as an epistemic agent, namely showing how AI directly participates in knowledge production. AI has an active role in the creation, validation and transformation of knowledge that cannot be underestimated, but that needs instead further analysis to assess its impact on the episteme. Indeed, more and more AI systems work as discoverers in the medical and scientific field. But also, as validators since they are currently used to check the consistency and validity of a variety of arguments and findings in different fields. Moreover, AI-driven technologies are directly involved in the communication of these research, widely affecting how epistemic inquiries are even conceived. Therefore, following this digression, I prove AI’s ability to actively engage in knowledge inquiries, directly interfering with our epistemic landscape. However, someone could argue that AI is just a passive tool with no intentionality and thus cannot be an active agent in knowledge production (Chinese Room thought experiment). I state, instead, that even though AI lacks intentionality this does not prove that AI technologies could not act as epistemic agents, directly shaping our system of knowledge.
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SOPhiA 2026 