L'intelligenza artificiale tra hype e discorsi critici: paradigmi sociosemiotici a confronto

This article addresses the relationship between semiotics and reality focussing on the polarized discourses surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI). Doing so, it contrasts techno-optimistic narratives with critical perspectives that highlight AI’s political, economic, and socio-cultural implications. Using a sociosemiotic framework informed by Saussure, Peirce, and Prieto, it examines how divergent interpretive codes transform the same “dynamic object” into contrasting “immediate objects,” depending on what is deemed pertinent for specific practices. Thomas Kuhn’s notion of scientific paradigms is applied. First, it is shown that when he wrote of them, Kuhn had in mind nothing more than some semiotic systems grounded in Saussurean, Peircean, and Prietoan principles. Then, building upon such principles, two dominant frameworks shaping AI since the beginning of its modern history are identified: Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic paradigm, advocating multi-perspectival, human-centered design, and the von Neumann–Simon paradigm, promoting disembodied, bias-free computational rationality. By mapping these paradigms to current debates, the paper shows how semiotic codes guide technological agendas, funding priorities, and public imaginaries. It argues that the choice between such paradigms will decisively influence whether AI reinforces centralized, mono-perspectival control systems or supports inclusive, pluralistic governance, with profound implications for the future of technology and society, hence for the kind of reality we will live in.