Elena Esposito

Elena Esposito studied under Niklas Luhmann at Bielefeld and has become the most influential contemporary scholar applying Luhmann's systems theory to digital technology and artificial intelligence. Professor of sociology at the University of Bologna and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, her work on algorithmic communication, the future of futures, and the temporality of digital media extends Luhmann's framework into domains he did not live to see. Her 2022 book Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence argues that AI-generated outputs are not simulations of communication but a new form of communication—one in which the machine provides information and utterance while the human provides understanding. The communication is completed at the destination, not the source, consistent with Luhmann's tripartite model. Esposito's work provides the systems-theoretical foundation for understanding AI not as intelligent or unintelligent but as communicatively competent—able to produce outputs that social systems process as communications, regardless of the machine's internal states.