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Knowledge in the Making
A philosophical journey through the landscapes of human understanding
The path to knowledge: A personal reflection
The question of the origin of our knowledge seems almost anachronistic in our data-driven world. While we are daily confronted with terms like “big data,” “machine learning,” and “algorithmic decision-making,” a fundamental question recedes into the background: How do we actually know what we believe we know?
When I recently read that an AI system achieves better results in diagnosing skin cancer than experienced dermatologists, I spontaneously wondered: Is the AI’s “knowledge” the same as the doctor’s? The doctor relies on years of experience, theoretical understanding, and clinical intuition. The AI, on the other hand, recognizes patterns in millions of images without ever having touched or spoken to a patient. If both arrive at the same diagnosis — have they “recognized” the same thing? This question is not only philosophically interesting but has concrete consequences: Whom do we trust when diagnoses conflict? Who bears responsibility for wrong decisions?
The epistemological question is more relevant than ever as we increasingly delegate decisions to systems based on entirely different “ways of knowing” than human thinking.
