https://gregoirelits.eu/en/ 2026-06-16T14:37:14.733532+00:00 Grégoire Lits https://gregoirelits.eu/en/2025-06-17-AI-and-the-Dispersion-of-Expertise.html 2025-06-17T00:00:00+00:00 2025-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

How generative tools redistribute epistemic authority.

<p>One of the issues raised by the development of conversational AIs - which might more accurately be described as <strong>centralized banks of knowledge and expertise</strong> - is that they contradict the mechanism of expertise dispersion within society.</p> <p>Today, if you have a legal problem, you can consult a lawyer who has spent many years developing a specific expertise and who will help you resolve the issue.</p> <p>Since there is more than one lawyer offering such services, on the one hand, you have a choice among a diversity of individuals and therefore of areas of expertise. But more importantly, from a sociological perspective, legal expertise is dispersed throughout society (even though some law firms do centralize certain specializations and acquire dominant positions in the legal expertise market).</p> <p>Sociologically, legal expertise exists redundantly within society through the practice of a multitude of lawyers, judges, legal assistants, and jurists. This is also true for other types of expertise (economic, accounting, medical, etc.).</p> <p>This dispersion is one of the foundations of how our societies function, both organizationally and democratically. This mechanism of expertise dispersion (or specialization of individuals) is also often at the heart of how we build our social identities (we define ourselves as lawyers, nurses, teachers, nutritionists, travel agents, etc.). It also plays a central role in how we organize the symbolic and economic hierarchies that structure society.</p> <p>The dispersion of expertise is a core organizational principle of our societies and of our lives as individuals.</p> <p>The promise of centralized banks of knowledge and expertise (aka conversational AIs) is to offer a digital one-stop shop (currently owned by a private company often based in California) for the consultation of <strong>all kinds of expertise</strong>, <strong>by everyone</strong>, <strong>in all societies</strong>. An expertise that, moreover, instantly adapts to our individual specificities based on previously collected data about our preferences, behaviors, and opinions.</p> <p>If the use of centralized knowledge and expertise banks were to become widespread, our societies could be profoundly reconfigured, since the principle of centralization of expertise that underpins them is opposed to the principle of dispersion that currently governs our collective functioning.</p> <p>Note: This text is an atomated translation of the French version of the text found <a href="https://gregoirelits.eu/fr/2025-06-17-IA-et-dispersion-des-expertises.html">here</a>.</p> https://gregoirelits.eu/en/2023-03-28-mesuring-and-defining-informational-vulnerability.html 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

I presented the current state of my research on how to define and measure "informational vulnerability", i.e. the risk for a person to be more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation.

<p>Three weeks ago I had the chance to be the first guest of the EDMO Belux Lunch Lectures.</p> <p>Edmo Belux is one of the EU-funded platforms that brings together actors from the field (fact-checkers, media and academics) to monitor and fight disinformation in Europe.</p> <p>I presented the current state of my research on how to define and measure "informational vulnerability", i.e. the risk for a person to be more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation.</p> <p>This presentation has been recorded and is available on the Edmo Belux Youtube account.</p> <ul> <li>Link to the video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_whTK-Jtmrg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_whTK-Jtmrg</a></li> </ul>