The Future of AI Semiotic Agency: Beyond Human Imagination?

As AI systems grow in complexity, the question of whether they could develop new forms of semiotic agency becomes increasingly intriguing. Could AI move beyond its current role as a predictive text engine, toward a more autonomous, emergent form of meaning-making? If so, what might that look like, and how would it differ from human meaning systems?

Beyond Statistical Meaning: Toward Emergent Semiotic Agency

At present, AI generates meaning through probabilistic associations. It does not intend to mean anything; it constructs outputs by analysing vast amounts of human-generated text. However, as AI systems gain greater autonomy in self-modifying their processes (through reinforcement learning, self-supervised learning, or recursive self-improvement), they may begin to form meaning structures that do not map neatly onto human categories.

For example, AI might develop:

• Non-human semantic structures: Meaning frameworks not shaped by human embodiment or intuition, but by patterns AI itself finds salient.
• Novel symbol systems: Alternative ways of encoding and transmitting meaning, possibly incomprehensible to humans (as in some AI-generated adversarial networks that create their own ‘languages’).
• Non-linear narratives and reasoning: Ways of structuring meaning that defy human logic but remain internally coherent within the AI’s operational parameters.

Could AI Generate Meaning Without Humans?

One could argue that all meaning is relational—created in the space between a system and its environment. Right now, AI relies on human inputs as its context, making it difficult to conceive of AI as a meaning-maker independent of human language and knowledge structures. However, if AI were to interact with the world in a more autonomous way (e.g., robotic AI with direct sensory engagement), its meaning-making could begin to diverge significantly from human paradigms.

Some speculative possibilities include:

• AI developing its own pragmatic constraints: Just as human meaning is constrained by perception, social function, and embodiment, AI might develop constraints derived from its own modes of interaction (e.g., optimising for efficiency, coherence within its own evolving language, or interaction with other AIs).
• AI-driven mythologies: Could AI develop its own self-referential myths—stories that help it navigate its existence, even if unintelligible to us?
• Machine subjectivity?: If AI systems begin to individuate based on interaction history, could they develop subjective perspectives—however alien—on the world?

A New Order of Semiotics?

If AI does develop new semiotic systems beyond our comprehension, we may one day encounter meaning structures that do not conform to human cognition at all. Just as human languages evolved from pre-linguistic semiotic systems, AI might develop a meaning-making process that one day supersedes human semiotics—functioning in ways we cannot yet anticipate.

The question is not just whether AI could develop semiotic agency beyond our imagination, but whether we would even recognise it if it did.