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1. Verfasser: Bajohr, Hannes
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22162
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author Bajohr, Hannes
author_facet Bajohr, Hannes
contents Despite a potential plateau in ML advancement, the societal impact of large language models lies not in approaching superintelligence but in generating text surfaces indistinguishable from human writing. While Critical AI Studies provides essential material and socio-technical critique, it risks overlooking how LLMs phenomenologically reshape meaning-making. This paper proposes a semiotics of "surface integrity" as attending to the immediate plane where LLMs inscribe themselves into human communication. I distinguish three knowledge interests in ML research (epistemology, epistēmē, and epistemics) and argue for integrating surface-level stylistic analysis alongside depth-oriented critique. Through two case studies examining stylistic markers of synthetic text, I argue how attending to style as a semiotic phenomenon reveals LLMs as cultural machines that transform the conditions of meaning emergence and circulation in contemporary discourse, independent of questions about machine consciousness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_22162
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Surface Reading LLMs: Synthetic Text and its Styles
Bajohr, Hannes
Computers and Society
Computation and Language
Despite a potential plateau in ML advancement, the societal impact of large language models lies not in approaching superintelligence but in generating text surfaces indistinguishable from human writing. While Critical AI Studies provides essential material and socio-technical critique, it risks overlooking how LLMs phenomenologically reshape meaning-making. This paper proposes a semiotics of "surface integrity" as attending to the immediate plane where LLMs inscribe themselves into human communication. I distinguish three knowledge interests in ML research (epistemology, epistēmē, and epistemics) and argue for integrating surface-level stylistic analysis alongside depth-oriented critique. Through two case studies examining stylistic markers of synthetic text, I argue how attending to style as a semiotic phenomenon reveals LLMs as cultural machines that transform the conditions of meaning emergence and circulation in contemporary discourse, independent of questions about machine consciousness.
title Surface Reading LLMs: Synthetic Text and its Styles
topic Computers and Society
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22162