The Digital Helmsman: Semiosis, Disintermediation, and Artificial Intelligence

The article pinpoints differences and similarities between semiosis and mediation, articulates the concepts of mediation and intermediation, distinguishes among different types of disintermediation, remediation, and re-intermediation, and applies this conceptual grid to artificial intelligence. It reaches the conclusion that, depending on whether artificial intelligence disintermediates a previous mediation or a previous intermediation, it becomes the object of different perceptions of agency, some of which entail a rhetoric of unbiased automatism. Semiotics is perfectly placed to study them. The article concludes that the next frontier of these rhetorics will consist in coating artificial intelligence with hyper-realistic simulacra of the body, starting from the primary social interface, that is, the face.