Simulated Sense‐Making or Social Knowledge? Artificial Intelligence and the Boundaries of Representation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6431969 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lilian Negura (0000-0002-5224-5451, University of Ottawa Ottawa Ontario Canada, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/jtsb.70012 |
| OpenAlex | W4413852284 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 33 |
This article examines whether AI‐generated texts—such as stories produced by large language models (LLMs)—can be considered social representations as defined by social representation theory. This paper argues that AI‐generated outputs simulate communicative behaviour without participating in social processes of meaning‐making. Although these texts contain familiar symbols, metaphors or narrative structures, they lack dialogical co‐construction, intentionality and embeddedness in cultural practices. This paper introduces the concept of quasi‐agents to capture the distinctive role that AI systems occupy in social interactions: entities perceived as social interlocutors, despite lacking genuine intentionality or social consciousness. This conceptual innovation extends social representation theory's analytical vocabulary, facilitating clearer distinctions between socially constructed meanings and algorithmically generated simulations. Misidentifying machine‐generated texts as genuine social knowledge risks eroding the dialogical foundations of public discourse, particularly in education, media and policy contexts. Ultimately, meaning‐making remains fundamentally a human and collective endeavour—one that AI may mirror but not originate
Cognitive science · Commonsense knowledge · Epistemology · Knowledge representation and reasoning · Political science · Representation (politics · Sense (electronics · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Engineering · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Philosophy · Psychology
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The Eliza effect and its dangers
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| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |