Technosemiotics: AI and the (human) semiosphere

In the fifth seminar, Alec Kozicki discusses AI through the lens of Lotman’s concept of semiosphere.

ABSTRACT

This presentation will explore how the concept of Juri Lotman’s semiosphere can analyze how AI-related artifacts have made an impact in societies in the last decade and in the more recent years. The presentation will use Lotman’s key components of the semiosphere as a starting point for theory, specifically focusing on the notion of center, periphery and boundary. Additionally, the presentation will include John Hartley’s approach on how the semiosphere can help identify how creativity emerges from certain stakeholders within a culture. Hartley’s approach to the semiosphere elaborates on four models of creative industries, which includes creative clusters, creative services, creative citizens, and creative cities. These four creative industries will provide sufficient grounding to uncover how AI-related objects are being integrated within cultures. What we will see is that AI-related objects have not only made a transition for some localized meaning-making acts, but certain applications have contributed to a global scale of pushing the boundaries of economy, mobility, sociology, psychology, and creativity. 

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Alec Kozicki, from Marietta, Georgia, is a second-year PhD student in the University of Tartu’s semiotics program. The design of techno-living spaces is the main focus of his dissertation, he also researches value relations from the perspective of cultural psychology and the psychological processing of inner speech and meaning-making. Alec’s central research focus aims at providing a deeper theoretical understanding on the design of techno-living spaces. His research for this topic constructs a transdisciplinary approach that provides insight on how we, as creators and users, are living within technology, which allows a novel approach to model how perception and meaning-making acts are changing with the continual development of techno-living spaces.