Complexity & Systems of MeaningGet the book

Part III

Onto-ethics of collaboration

Who verifies, and who is accountable for the decision?

The idea, in brief

I return to CyberMate to ask an ethical question: if AI participates in creating meaning, how does responsibility change? I engage with information ontology, distributed cognition and collaborative ethics, seeking criteria for work in hybrid systems.

Here I summarise the chapter’s argument. Below you will find an excerpt from my book and the references I cite there, numbered as in the bibliography.

Companion page reviewed · 17 October 2026

From the book’s companion

An excerpt from my book

Original Italian text, from the chapter opening. · 1 min

Il capitolo precedente si è chiuso su una constatazione che attraversava ogni sua sezione come un basso continuo e che a un certo punto non poteva più restare implicita: se l'AI generativa è un mediatore e non un semplice intermediario, se partecipa alla costruzione di significati condivisi, se influenza la dimensione emotiva e simbolica del lavoro e ridisegna l'architettura della cognizione distribuita, allora la questione del "CyberMate" non è mai stata soltanto una questione organizzativa. È, inevitabilmente, (anche, almeno anche) una questione etica. Avevo "giustificato e corroborato" (più che dimostrato, lo riconosco) l'idea che l'AI generativa potesse replicare elementi sostanziali della collaborazione umana, superando i confini della mera strumentalità per configurarsi come agente attivo nei processi cognitivi e sociali. Ma se accettiamo anche solo parzialmente questa conclusione, ci troviamo di fronte a una trasformazione che ci obbliga a una riflessione su cosa significhi "essere" all'interno di questo nuovo ecosistema ibrido di intelligenze, e su come si distribuisca in un simile ecosistema la responsabilità morale.

My note

It is a bit of fun, born mainly because I wanted to use at least one quotation from the “TRACTATUS” in my book.

The chapter’s infographics

Enlarge each plate to inspect it. The overview and extended text above explain the chapter in text; they are not a word-for-word transcription of the images.

Chapter infographic map #

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References I cite in this chapter

I have gathered the references cited in this chapter, preserving the entries and numbering of my book’s bibliography. Links are included only where supplied in the book.

  • [44] Floridi, Luciano. The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.
  • [42] Floridi, Luciano. "The Method of Levels of Abstraction". Minds and Machines, 18(3), 303–329, 2008.
  • [75] Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
  • [10] Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2007.
  • [43] Floridi, Luciano. The Ethics of Information. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013.
  • [13] Benanti, Paolo. Oracoli. Tra algoretica e algocrazia. Luca Sossella Editore, Roma, 2018.
  • [15] Benanti, Paolo. Human in the Loop. Decisioni umane e intelligenze artificiali. Mondadori Università, Milano, 2022.
  • [45] Floridi, Luciano. The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019.
  • [46] Floridi, Luciano. The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2023.
  • [100] Pellegrino, Edmund D. e David C. Thomasma. The Virtues in Medical Practice. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
A term is unfamiliar? Open the glossary →

Bring it into your work

Who verifies, and who is accountable for the decision?

Write down one real example, identify what you would delegate and name who will check the result.

Use the worksheet

Connected ideas

is introduced by

Cybernetic teammate

from the synthetic colleague to the ethical knot

introduces

From A(I)DOPTION to A(I)DAPTATION

from onto-ethics to the frontier of adaptation

reinforces

ConcrEthica

the ethical compass sketched in Ch.3, carried inside hybrid teams

reinforces

The illusion of agentic AI

from delegation (agency theory) to asymmetric distributed responsibility

contributes to

A(I)DOPTION

ethical governance on three levels (micro/meso/macro)

contributes to

The formula of meaning

C₁ — ethical/relational awareness

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Riccardo Bovetti · Essay · English edition. Purchase and current availability on Amazon.

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