Complexity & Systems of MeaningGet the book

Part IV

Homo A(I)DAPTANS

Which habit do you want to choose rather than inherit?

The idea, in brief

I use HOMO A(I)daptans to name the anthropological profile I try to describe when living with AI becomes an everyday environment. I draw on the figure of the social migrant and split habitus. My proposed etiquette concerns verification, attribution, retained competence and responsibility.

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

Nel capitolo precedente ho provato a tenere insieme due piani (distinti) della disciplina dell'A(I)daptation, la ricombinazione organizzativa che avviene quando l'AI passa dall'usare le strutture esistenti al ridefinirle e la redistribuzione delle competenze in conseguenza di ciò, costruendomi un ulteriore dubbio di natura "non tecnica" tra possibilità e necessità. Risulta però necessario introdurre un terzo piano più ambizioso e rischioso che riguarda proprio il "soggetto" che questa trasformazione sta introducendo (o producendo). Lo chiamerò HOMO A(I)daptans per descriverlo più come profilo antropologico nel senso pieno del termine che come categoria manageriale od organizzativa.

My note

When I started university I “inherited” from my brother (who had just finished) the tiny student flat in Turin (at Via Nizza 19, just at the end of what we called the “arcades of health”). Among his things still waiting to be taken away there was a small (very funny) pamphlet called “Homo automobilisticus”, which poked fun at the anthropological traits of man the driver. And there it is: the inspiration comes from there and then, as always in my case, immediately turns into something deadly serious.

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.

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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.

  • [82] Malinowski, Bronisław. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge, London, 1922.
  • [102] Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. Cohen & West, London, 1952.
  • [78] Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Anthropologie structurale. Plon, Paris, 1958.
  • [79] Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La pensée sauvage. Plon, Paris, 1962.
  • [55] Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books, New York, 1973.
  • [29] Clifford, James e George E. Marcus, a cura di. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986.
  • [1] Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Writing against Culture". In Richard G. Fox, a cura di, Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, 137–162. School of American Research Press, 1991.
  • [120] Tonelli, Flavio e Emilio Mango. Oltre l'intelligenza artificiale. L'era dell'Homo AI 0 e delle ecologie cognitivo-relazionali. EGEA, Milano, 2026.
  • [38] Eribon, Didier. La société comme verdict: Classes, identités, trajectoires. Fayard, Paris, 2013.
  • [20] Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Traduzione di Richard Nice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977.
  • [21] Bourdieu, Pierre. La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1979.
  • [37] Eribon, Didier. Retour à Reims. Fayard, Paris, 2009.
  • [60] Han, Byung-Chul. Müdigkeitsgesellschaft. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2010. Trad. it.: La società della stanchezza, Nottetempo, 2012.
  • [61] Han, Byung-Chul. Psychopolitik: Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken. S. Fischer, Frankfurt, 2014. Trad. it.: Psicopolitica, Nottetempo, 2016.
  • [58] Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963.
  • [4] Airoldi, Massimo. Machine Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Algorithms. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2022.
  • [117] Suchman, Lucy. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007.
  • [124] Verbeek, Peter-Paul. What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
  • [83] Maples, Bethanie, Merve Cerit, Aditya Vishwanath e Roy Pea. "Loneliness and Suicide Mitigation for Students Using GPT3-enabled Chatbots". npj Mental Health Research, 2024.
  • [115] Skjuve, Marita, Petter Bae Brandtzaeg e Asbjørn Følstad. "A Longitudinal Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2021.
  • [121] Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, New York, 2011.
  • [7] Anthropic. Anthropic Economic Index Report: Uneven Geographic and Enterprise AI Adoption. Anthropic, 2025. ↗
  • [81] Lightcast. Beyond the Buzz: Developing the AI Skills Employers Actually Need. Lightcast, 2025. ↗
  • [64] Jaquet, Chantal. Les transclasses ou la non-reproduction. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2014.
  • [2] Accoto, Cosimo. Il mondo in sintesi: Cinque brevi lezioni di filosofia della simulazione. Egea, Milano, 2022.
  • [32] Dell'Acqua, Fabrizio, Edward McFowland III, Ethan R. Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon e Karim R. Lakhani. Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality. Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Management Unit Working Paper No. 24-013 / The Wharton School Research Paper, 2023. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4573321.
  • [87] Mollick, Ethan. Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Portfolio/Penguin, New York, 2024.
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Which habit do you want to choose rather than inherit?

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

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Connected ideas

is introduced by

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

from the frontier to the subject who inhabits it

is in tension with

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

being able to do more vs having to do more

contributes to

A(I)DOPTION

the etiquette as the evolution of A(I)DOPTION into A(I)DAPTATION

contributes to

The formula of meaning

A_A — being able to do → having to do

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