Artificial Intelligence and Design Disciplines: Toward an Epistemological, Semiotic, and Professional Reconfigura tion of Design

Abstract

The integration of artificial intelligence into design disciplines introduces a transformation that extends beyond the instrumental, reshaping the conditions under which design is produced, validated, and interpreted. This paper examines this transformation through an articulation between semiotics and the epistemology of design, arguing that designed artifacts function as systems of signification and that AI participates in the production of these systems without constituting an interpreting subject. From this perspective, the paper proposes a reconfiguration of design as a practice oriented toward the construction of frameworks for meaning-making, in which designers no longer operate exclusively on form but instead intervene in the systems that generate it. In this process, they are compelled to develop new micro–soft skills for managing design as a key activity within this emerging epistemology of design.