BEYOND THE ILLUSION OF OBJECTIVITY: Trust, Technology, and Expertise after the Large Language Models

This paper addresses the ongoing crisis of expertise in the digital age by analysing the growing, but often misplaced, trust in generative technologies such as large language models (LLMs). While rhetorically persuasive, these systems simulate coherence without ensuring epistemic validity, displacing traditional forms of expert mediation. Based on a relational theory of expertise and a digital humanist framework, this paper calls for a renewed understanding of competence and trust grounded in situated, ethical, and cultural practises. The paper unfolds in seven sections. It begins by reconstructing the limits of traditional models of expertise, then explores how digital technologies have emerged as apparent alternatives to expert mediation. A historical and conceptual analysis follows, showing how platforms and LLMs gained epistemic authority. The central sections critically assess the logic of LLMs and the misplaced trust they generate. The final part proposes a renewed, relational model of expertise grounded in a digital humanist ethos.