How AI Alters The Conditions Of Interpretation

1. Meaning Potential as Afforded by AI Systems

AI tools alter meaning potential by:

• Externalising parts of the semiotic process: With LLMs, we outsource not just the realisation of meanings, but also the exploration of meaning potential. That means a user’s meaning potential now includes latent semantic paths that weren’t previously imaginable.

• Creating new patterns of instantiation: When AI outputs language, it's not simply repeating human forms. It blends, remixes, and reorganises structures—meaning its outputs offer affordances that might not have been available in a human user’s system.

✳️ The intriguing bit: meaning potential is no longer just a function of socialisation or learning—it’s shaped by interaction with tools that model language differently.

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2. Individuation in the Age of AI

Traditionally, individuation refers to the development of a unique meaning potential out of the collective social semiotic. But:

• AI introduces pseudo-individuated language: LLM outputs can appear individuated—eloquent, stylistically consistent, argumentatively rich. But they aren’t grounded in a history of social affiliation or life experience.

• Users may co-individuate with AI: Someone working closely with AI might develop patterns of interaction that blend their own meaning potential with the kinds of responses AI affords. This has the potential to blur the line between personal voice and co-constructed meaning.

✳️ We might be seeing the rise of technologically mediated individuation: not just humans shaping tools, but tools reshaping how we develop our semiotic identities.

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3. Instantiation Becomes Iterative and Dialogic

AI changes instantiation in key ways:

• It makes instantiation interactive. Texts are no longer just outputs—they’re turning points in ongoing dialogues with a tool that adapts to context.

• It allows for rapid iteration. You can generate, refine, reframe, and reinstantiate ideas in seconds. This collapses the temporal and cognitive gap between ideation and expression.

✳️ The instantiation process becomes a loop between human and machine: meaning isn’t just expressed—it’s co-evolved in the act of making.

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4. AI and the Reframing of Interpretation

AI doesn’t just produce text—it alters the reader’s stance:

• Readers know the text wasn’t written with intentionality in the human sense—so interpretation shifts from "What did the author mean?" to "What meaning does this afford me in this context?"

• The reader becomes more of a constructor than a decoder of meaning.

✳️ That puts the spotlight back on the human interpreter—not as a passive recipient of meaning, but as a semiotic agent responding to a radically open text.