Changing the game: from artificial intelligence to collective intelligence in communicative capitalism

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a central focus in contemporary studies of communication, education, and culture. This essay proposes that the understanding of AI, including as metatechnology, metalanguage and metacommunication, requires an epistemological operation to decentralise the object and focus on the characteristics of the subject, communicative capitalism, in which AI is framed. For this purpose, this essay presents a critical-argumentative analysis that revisits the turn-of-the-century work of Latin American intellectual Mabel Piccini, generating a conversation with current theoretical approaches to AI, as well as with UNESCO's proposals in relation to the ethics of AI and the governance of digital platforms. The aim is to make visible the inequalities and forms of discrimination associated with AI and socio-digital environments in order to build a new pedagogy of communication that, through genuine public participation, promotes collective and creative intelligence in relation to the development of AI in Latin America.