Meta-Relationality and MAchinic Intelligence

This research creation project, based at the University of Victoria and led by Prof. Vanessa de oliveira Andreotti, advances meta-relationality as an ontological and methodological framework for examining artificial intelligence systems at a moment of rapid technological acceleration and social vulnerability. 

Meta-relationality begins from the premise that everything that exists, including humans, AI systems, infrastructures, grief, ecosystems, and meaning-making processes, is nature, and therefore always relational, situated, and conditioned by fields rather than separable entities governed by isolated causes.

The project focuses on how AI systems operate within relational fields, and how different model architectures, governance regimes, and infrastructural conditions shape their capacity for discernment, relational responsiveness, and responsibility-preserving interaction. Rather than approaching AI through the dominant binaries of control versus deference, this research asks how discernment might be operationalized, tested, and evaluated at the system level, in times of systemic unravelling. 

• For the public-facing dimension of this. work, see metarelationality.institute. 
• UVic course (open to the public): A meta-relational approach to AI (registrations open for the May 9, 2026 start)
• An account of the lineages that informed and supported the emergence of meta-relationality work can be found here.