Here you can find my latest single-authored article “An Ecosystemic View on Information, Data and Knowledge: Insights on Agential AI and Relational Ethics“, published open access in AI & Ethics.

In this article, I dig into the nature of data and information and, starting from information theory, I question the often assumed hierarchisation between the two (cf. the DIKW pyramid), advancing, by contrast, not only that information precedes data but that the two are different in kind.

From here, I propose an ecosystemic understanding of knowledge (and knowing) as an emergent process entangling knower and known (part of a quantum epistemological framework, developed together with Derrick de Kerckhove in our book Quantum Ecology: Why and How New Information Technologies Will Reshape Societies, published open access by MIT Press).

This leads – by endorsing an embodied understanding of cognition – to regard agency as an autopoietic open-ended information processing always “from within“, that is, ever partial and perspectival, beyond any God-like privileged standpoint.

Such an understanding, on the one hand, helps overcome the essentialist character usually connoting the “human vs tech” divide in favour of a symbiotic position that is concerned with exploring the epistemological effects of the user-AI co-evolution; on the other hand, it supports a radical relational approach to ethics, beyond normative and/or axiomatic approaches (cf. mine and Hendrik Ploeger’s article on ethics as a “problem-opening” practice).

Why is this kind of theoretical work relevant? The article informs a broad conceptualisation of “sensing” intended as an emergent process of actualisation of reality which remains agonistic as far as the nature of agency is concerned and which calls, in turn, for an adaptive and cognisant (i.e., ecological) approach toward the other(s).

At a time in which (more or less robust/political) announcements about new tech “wizardries” go by the day, we need more than ever to jump off the carrousel of hype, step back, and dedicate efforts to fundamental philosophical research that can supply, not only a solid ground on which to stand before the swinging effects and affects of technology, but also a vision – a distanced long-term trajectory – concerning what kind of technology we want and how to shape our relation to it.

Hopefully, this article is a first contribution in this direction.