Epistemic Responsibility in AI-Enabled Societies: Ethics and Policy in the Era of Information Warfare

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast changing civilian and military practice. Although the discussions of AI ethics often address issues of bias, fairness, and/or autonomous weapons, this paper suggests that the epistemic domain is the most urgent problem. Algorithmic manipulation and disinformation, as a kind of epistemic war, account to new ways of war discourses in the context of AI-enabled societies, where the possibility of responsible agency is put at risk. The main argument is that epistemic responsibility has to take priority over technological control in both ethics and policy. The paper shall then propose a new policy orientation that is based on principle of epistemic jus in bello : the principle of knowledge-based justness in warfare. This truth is that the integrity of knowledge environments is ethically no lesser urgent than defending civilian lives during kinetic conflict. By combining a formalized measure of epistemic integrity – via the Epistemic Integrity Index (EII) – with this normative framework, the paper bridges philosophy, ethics, and policy, offering a new model for understanding and regulating AI’s role in the epistemic dimension of modern conflict.