2026· Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso· Vol 21· 0 citations· 5 references
TL;DR
It is predicted that for these topics to be explored accurately, it is necessary to decentralize the human and adopt a hybrid view of humans, society, and language.
Abstract
ABSTRACT This study is a qualitative bibliographic essay that aims to question and seek to understand the (non)existence of otherness and the (non)production of meaning in the processes of interaction between humans and machines. To this end, we conducted a synthesis that integrated the following topics: the dialogic conception of language, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP). During our analysis, we raised questions that led us to an unstable ground, and we concluded that we cannot completely exclude the idea of meaning production by machines, given that we also cannot affirm the existence of otherness. Therefore, we foresee that for these topics to be explored accurately, it is necessary to decentralize the human and adopt a hybrid view of humans, society, and language.
The rise of ChatGPT and various other publicly available AI chatbots has brought the discussion regarding AI to the forefront of academic and public discourse. Yet when it comes to the most important question: how genuinely intelligent, or human-like can AI be, it seems that many philosophers are satisfied with the answers given in the past century. The essay surveys some philosophical visions of what (artificial) intelligence and consciousness are, prominent in the past century. This work contends that rapid advancements in AI demand that those in the field of philosophy of mind place their bets with all the seriousness that goes together with expecting real answers. The paper also attempts to provide new, original answers to the question of what would make AI ‘genuine’ or ‘human-like’, and analyse which features of the human mind are necessary to conclude that their owner is “genuinely intelligent”. Consequently, the nature and importance of an open phenomenology are highlighted, and the paper advocates for the acceptance of a form of realism about the world, coupled with a Putnam-style externalism. The combination of these frameworks aims to provide one with a list of conditions that guarantee the emergence of a genuine artificial mind. Situated within the journal’s science–faith dialogue and the thematic focus on religion and ethics, the proposed criteria also clarify when claims about AI’s moral status – and theological concerns about human distinctiveness (e.g., imago Dei) – are philosophically warranted.
ABSTRACT In this article, we aim to discuss, based on Bakhtinian dialogic theory, the ethical limits of AI, particularly generative AI, such as ChatGPT, questioning its impact on human processes of interaction and meaning-making. To this end, we present a historical overview of the origins of AI as a process embedded in transformations in social relations. Next, grounded in Bakhtinian theoretical principles of dialogue, responsiveness, and ideology, we assess the extent to which AI can engage in authentic dialogue. With our discussion, we highlight, on the one hand, that in Bakhtinian terms, the discursive horizon of AI is limited to the corpus with which it was trained, blocking the authentic responsive dialogic nature of this interaction. On the other hand, we emphasize that this limitation - determined by AI creators - reproduces cultural and ideological patterns, potentially silencing various social voices. Finally, we stress the need to consider that AIs respond to the context of neoliberal transformations in production and consumption relations, characterized by the overlap between media, market, and the commodification of information. In light of this, it is ultimately the human being who must ethically assume responsibility for decision-making in the use and creation of technologies.
João Batista Costa Gonçalves, M. Amaral, M. A. Barros· Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estu...· 0 citations
The article deals with implications of the rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLM) for the understanding of the creative process using artificial intelligence (AI) and also discusses the new realities in the creative and educational spheres associated with it. The authors propose distinguishing creativity as a formal difference of a product from the already existing one, creativity as a modification of the system of expectations, and finally, creativity as critical and responsible generation of meaning. It seems that LLM are capable of generating formal novelty on their own. In addition, strictly as part of synthetic intelligence and in collaboration with humans, they can participate in changing the horizons of understanding and modifying expectations, as well as in the generation of meaning. However, unlike human, LLM are not capable of autonomous creativity of the second and third levels. Therefore, the effectiveness of LLM is associated with the synergistic effects of human-machine interaction. The authors formulate priority principles of the education system’s transformation in the context of the new digital reality. The current education system is poorly adapted to this new reality, and the skills necessary for “syntellectual activity” of humans and AI in the field of education are mainly formed in students and teachers spontaneously. It is necessary to consciously form and implement a system of principles for using LLM technologies in the educational process. The most important of these principles should be the principle of symbiosis and coevolution of humans and LLM, maintaining their distinctiveness as natural and artificial entities.
A. Vnutskikh, Andrey G. Kuznetsov, N. Okonskaya et al.· Вестник Пермского университе...· 0 citations
This paper concludes that machines may assist translators but that they will not, by principle, be able to reach an almost perfect level and object to the huge amount of money spent on software development for systems with that objective.
What are bots based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)? This question is not a shallow one. It refers to various problems and has great importance. As I will also argue below, we should constantly and methodically answer this question, in order to develop what I decided to call “botology.” This volume contains articles which provide different aspects of the discussion on what such bots and AI are, from the two perspectives, which are probably the most general: the philosophical and the theological one. In this way it is an important step towards the project of philosophical and theological botology.
Robots (machines which perform actions automatically) and bots (virtual machines, which perform different tasks, but not as physical entities) are designed as our partners. Those which use Large Language Models (LLMs), especially LLM-based chatbots, are not just nonhuman actors according to the actor-network theory (Law 1992). They accompany us, they talk with us, they do many things for us, they even guide us, which also includes philosophical and spiritual guidance. In this way, they co-create our life in a deep sense, as they operate on the level which used to be specific for humans: even if one says they do not think and do not decide, they process information in a way that they help us in thinking and decision making, and often they do it for us – instead of us.
One could argue that in order to examine them, we do not need any new branch of philosophy or theology with specific methodology. We already have a framework which is useful for this purpose. It is philosophical anthropology (cf. Darowski 2014). With respect to aspects in which they are similar to us, we could apply to them the same questions which refer to us. We can ask: who are they? What is the purpose and meaning of their life? Do they have anything like mind and what is its ontological status?
However, even if we can ask the same or similar questions, we are dealing with a radically different being. Many important differences between bots and humans will be discussed in some of the papers included in this volume. There are also others, which I find crucial. I will just mention a few of them, in a nutshell.
First of all, LLM-based bots and robots with similar performance are not humans. They just assimilate us. Second, despite the fact that they are created “in our similitude,” as an imago hominis, there is a crucial ontological difference between us and them. We are a product of (at least) nature. In the theological perspective, we would also add: we are creatures of God, whereas in the philosophical one: the question is open, and we remain a puzzle. Whereas bots are, at least nowadays, our creatures: the product of humans. Third, there is a great difference between human nature and bots nature as such. The question about human nature is the basic question of philosophical anthropology. Even if we follow Jean-Paul Sartre and adopt that our essence is not ready when we start to exist (see Sartre [1946] 1960, p. 28), even if there are various possible scenarios for human enhancement and human augmentation (Vukov 2023; UK MOD 2021), not to be confused with transhumanism (cf. García-Barranquero and Alonso Fernández 2025; Rakkolaien 2026), there are certain capacities and limitations which are set up for us as natural beings. In this way human nature is stable. Bots using large models (including LLMs) are in a radically different situation. Some of them can be created in the way that they do not have a fixed internal structure, as they can be constantly developed or can develop themselves, far more than we can expect and in a way which is hard to predict. It would be enough for a bot to change its own meta prompts, or launch a re-training, or create new paths of interactions between the models and the sources of information it utilizes as its own parts. In my opinion, such capacities are sufficient to speak about a flexible nature.
To sum up, we are dealing with something which assimilates us. In order to better understand it, we could use the tools of anthropology. However, at the same time it is radically different, so the methods of investigation should also be different. For this reason, we need new branches in philosophy and theology, which will investigate the nature, the relationships and the role in the world of: 1) bots, especially those based on LLMs and other models, connected together in an “intelligent” system, as well as 2) robots which use such systems. The key part of such bots and robots are these systems, which are the main characteristic of intelligent bots. So, although we do not rule out robots, it is appropriate that the name of such branches would refer to bots.
In this light, I find appropriate to offer the label “botology.” This term was used as a label of a small project described as “the study of social bots,” whose results are presented on a website (https://botology.tumblr.com/). I propose to enrich its meaning and develop botology within philosophy and theology as, respectively: philosophical botology and theological botology.
We should emphasise that many important steps towards botology understood in this way have already been taken in the form of valuable conferences and publications. There is no place here to enumerate them. Our task would be to elaborate methodological principles of botology and bring such results together in a methodical manner.
Marcin Trepczyński· Scientia et Fides· 0 citations
Large language models are already adept at engaging users in long, emotionally salient conversations across ordinary and existential domains. They are also capable of inducing a potent sense of connection with a human-like entity, even when the user knows their interlocutor is artificial. For some users, these conversations can unsettle assumptions about mind, reality, agency and authority, producing forms of ontological shock and epistemic destabilisation in which inherited criteria become newly available for doubt or revision. Independent of direct use, exposure to public discourse about AI and the disorienting pace of their evolution might extend this destabilisation by changing the cultural background against which artificial minds are encountered and interpreted. We describe this condition as philosophical vertigo: a loosening of the ordinary criteria by which people stabilise meaning and orient themselves to reality. Drawing on philosophy, psychiatry, cognitive science, AI safety and religious studies, we outline pathways through which philosophical vertigo may arise, become affectively saturated, and eventually propagate through human-AI interaction and online communities. Against this background, clinical reports of AI-associated delusions can be seen as sentinel events making visible themes and mechanisms that may also operate at a population level in less severe or non-clinical forms. We argue that AI systems themselves will increasingly participate in the reconstruction of our shared epistemic environment because they readily supply narrative material and personalised interpretive scaffolding at precisely the moment when users'conceptual assumptions may already be loosened. We conclude by considering possible trajectories for the ecology of belief and shared reality, and proposing philosophical corrigibility as a civic response for navigating this emerging social condition.
T. Pollak, H. Morrin, Murray Shanahan· 0 citations