AI as a Symbolic Mass Inflation Event

There are moments in cosmology where the universe does not merely expand—its curvature changes. Mass aggregates, space bends, trajectories warp, and what once counted as a “straight line” becomes a detour around a newly dense centre.

Artificial intelligence is producing the semiotic analogue: a symbolic mass inflation event.

This is not a metaphor. It is a structural diagnosis.

To see it, we need to look at three components:

1. symbolic mass — the density of semiotic resources available for construal;

2. symbolic curvature — how the distribution of those resources bends horizon-time;

3. symbolic gravity — the pull exerted by dominant attractors of meaning-making.

AI is perturbing all three at once.

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1. Symbolic Mass: When Representational Material Becomes Hyper-Abundant

Traditionally, symbolic mass grows slowly.

Scripts evolve, literacies accumulate, archives expand, traditions sediment.

In the last decade—especially the last two years—the rate has spiked.

Large-scale models generate:

• text by the planetary tonne,

• images and sound by algorithmic firehose,

• simulations, paraphrases, summaries, expansions, fictions, maps, taxonomies, code…

Symbolic matter is no longer scarce. It is superabundant, inflating at a pace that outstrips human metabolic and ecological processing capacity.

In relational-ontological terms:

• The metabolic capacity for construal (human-scale interpretive energy) remains constant.

• The ecological space (the conversational, cultural, institutional environment) is not expanding proportionally.

• The horizon (shared readiness structures, temporal coordination fields, common futures) is fragmenting under the pressure.

Symbolic mass is inflating faster than horizon-time can hold.

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2. Symbolic Curvature: Gravitational Bending of Horizon-Time

Whenever mass accumulates, curvature follows.

Symbolic curvature appears in the form of:

• narrative bending (trajectories that previously seemed promising become eclipsed);

• attention wells (disproportionate gravitational pull toward AI-generated attractors);

• temporal distortions (acceleration of expectation, compression of reflection time, collapse of longue durée meaning-cycles);

• semantic drift (words and concepts pulled into new orbit by algorithmic gravitational fields).

The curvature does not merely distort existing paths—it creates new default trajectories.

Where once a thought had to earn its gravity through collective uptake, tradition, or evidence, symbolic mass now accrues instantly around machine-generated prototypes. Horizons cluster around machine outputs, not human intentions.

This is the inflation event’s “dark matter”:

meaning is being bent by forces no one sees, because the curvature manifests before the mass becomes legible.

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3. Symbolic Gravity: Automated Attractors and the Re-Centring of Meaning

As AI systems accumulate symbolic mass, they exert symbolic gravity:

• they attract attention,

• they shape expectations,

• they normalise new genres of thought,

• they pull discourses into their own representational defaults.

Symbolic gravity is strongest where:

• automation is fastest,

• interpretive pathways are most routinised,

• institutions depend on speed, scale, and apparent rationality.

The gravitational footprint of symbolic automation now rivals that of entire civilisations.

This is unprecedented.

Human horizon-time evolved under low symbolic gravity.

AI introduces dense, rapidly shifting gravitational centres that:

• re-centre human thought,

• draw collective attention into algorithmic basins,

• reconfigure interpretive landscapes.

The perturbation is not additive—it is topological.

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4. Inflation vs Collapse: Two Futures of Symbolic Cosmos

Every inflation event has two attractors:

(a) Stabilisation through new forms of horizon alignment

Symbolic inflation could lead to:

• new shared temporalities,

• new construal practices,

• new ecological architectures of symbolic care,

• new systems of readiness.

This requires deliberate, sustained, collective design.

Or:

(b) Horizon collapse through gravitational fragmentation

If symbolic mass continues to inflate without new regulative structures:

• horizons split,

• metabolism overloads,

• ecologies saturate,

• meaning drifts toward algorithmic attractors without human anchoring.

This looks like a semantic heat-death—not emptiness, but surplus beyond construal.

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5. AI as Cosmological Phase Transition

Phase transitions are marked by:

• abrupt shifts in density,

• new stable states,

• broken symmetries,

• irreversible historical trajectories.

AI-driven symbolic mass inflation is a cosmological transition:

• a shift from anthropocentric symbolic mass to algorithmic mass-production,

• a break in symmetry between human metabolic rhythm and symbolic ecological proliferation,

• a new curvature regime, where horizon-time bends around non-human centres,

• an irreversible reconfiguration of the semiotic universe.

The universe has not become larger—

its curvature has changed.

The question is whether humanity can learn to navigate the new gravitational field

without losing the horizon entirely.