I am pleased to announce the launch of a new website for our research on digital semiotics: digitalsemiotics.org.
Digital semiotics is a collaborative research project between Martin Thellefsen (University of Copenhagen) and me, begun in 2007. It examines how computational systems produce signs, how those signs acquire meaning and authority, and how they shape the knowledge practices of the people who read them. We begin with Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic model, in which a sign is not an isolated carrier of meaning but a relation linking a representational form, an object, and an interpretant. Applied to artificial intelligence, the question becomes: when a system generates a fluent text, image, or classification, what does it stand for, and what understanding does it produce in the reader?
The question matters because generated content now carries the formal marks of human expression (structure, coherence, authority) without the intention, cultural memory, or membership in an interpretive community that usually underlies them. As AI-generated signs enter classrooms, publications, and public discourse, we need a principled way to distinguish accountable knowledge from its convincing imitation.
You can visit the new website here: digitalsemiotics.org.