The Adventure of AI and the implications of the semiotic model of Encyclopedia in understanding its semantic mechanisms
Prof. Kristian Bankov
New Bulgarian University
Kristian Bankov (born 1970) has been a professor of semiotics at the New Bulgarian University since 2011 and the director of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies since 2007. He led the organizing team of the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (2014). His interest in semiotics dates back to the early 1990s when, as a student in Bologna, he attended courses by Prof. Ugo Volli and Prof. Umberto Eco. Bankov graduated in 1995 and has been teaching semiotics at NBU since then.
In 2000, he defended his Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Prof. Eero Tarasti. In March 2006, he was awarded the academic title "Associate Professor of Contemporary Philosophical Doctrines (Semiotics)," and in 2011, he became a "Professor of Semiotics." In 2023, he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree. Prof. Bankov served as the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS) from 2014 to 2024. He served as Vice-Rector for the international affairs and public relations of the NBU from 2011 to 2012.
Prof. Bankov's initial scholarly interests were in the area of continental philosophy of language, Bergson's philosophy, and existential semiotics. He later shifted his research focus to sociosemiotics and issues of identity. Since 2005, he has been exploring the consumer culture, and in the past decade, his interest has turned to new media, digital culture, and recently to artificial intelligence.
Kristian Bankov is the author of five books and numerous articles in Bulgarian, English, and Italian. He is also active internationally, serving as the chief organizer of the annual International Early Fall School in Semiotics (EFSS) since 2006 and as the representative of the Balkans on the executive board of IASS/AIS since 2007.
Theme
The seminar is divided in three parts and bridges semiotics, philosophy, and AI, demonstrating how theoretical insights from structuralism and poststructuralism have influenced modern AI advancements:
The Semiotic Debate of First- and Second-Generation Doctrines (Eco 1979): Lexicological vs. Textual Analysis, followed by a discussion on the tension between lexicon-based meaning and contextual textual interpretation. Building on Eco’s work, I will argue that textual meaning cannot be reduced to a fixed lexical system but rather emerges through dynamic, contextual, and circumstantial selections. This suggests that semiotic meaning operates across multiple levels of amalgamation, requiring over-coded rules and textual operators.
Considerations on Eco’s Anticipation of AI and Neural Networks: In A Theory of Semiotics (1975), Eco proposed a model in which semantic units interact like “magnetized marbles” or through “wave frequencies” that attract or repel—an analogy strikingly similar to modern AI systems. I will highlight Eco’s concept of the “Rhizome,” which closely parallels the functioning of neural networks.
A section will also be dedicated to the process of the Training of the LLM and The Philosophical and Linguistic Roots of AI Development, with reference to Paul Ricoeur’s essay “What is a text: explanation and understanding” (1970), which explores the separation between writing and reading—shaping some of the conceptual premises for deep learning.
An Exploration of AI Attention Mechanisms: This section will define attention as a transformative AI tool that enhances model performance by selectively prioritizing relevant contextual data. We will explain its role in Natural Language Processing (NLP), leading to models like GPT, and highlight its scalability—enabling larger models and extending applications beyond text to domains such as computer vision (e.g., Vision Transformer, ViT).
Attendance
- Date: Dec 11th, 2025
- Time: 6:00pm (China Time)
- Zoom meeting code: 881 2878 9349
- Password: 043813
