This presentation explores the application of generative AI in systems-oriented deliberations, with particular focus on Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory and language emergence in complex socio-ecological contexts. Drawing from an extended collaborative inquiry into water governance systems, I will demonstrate how AI-augmented approaches can enhance our capacity to work across multiple frameworks, scales, and modalities while maintaining systemic coherence.
The presentation offers both vertical and horizontal slices through this work. The vertical slice provides a deep examination of how Pask’s conversation models illuminate the emergence of new terminology in stakeholder dialogues, revealing how language evolution reflects changing understanding of complex systems. The horizontal slice demonstrates transdisciplinary integration across multiple analytical frameworks, showing how different theoretical lenses complement and challenge each other.
Through concrete examples from our exploration of a fictional “Water Parliament” evolving over a century, I will illustrate seven key benefits of AI augmentation in cybernetic inquiry: transdisciplinary integration, multi-scale perspective development, pattern recognition, nuanced scenario construction, methodological innovation, multi-modal analysis, and rapid iteration. These benefits will be framed within an architectural visualization showing how they interrelate in practice.
The presentation concludes with implications for cybernetic governance and invites discussion on how these approaches might advance both theoretical understanding and practical applications in complex socio-ecological domains. The goal is not to position AI as a solution, but rather as a participant in dialogical meaning-making processes that can help us navigate increasingly complex systemic challenges.