AI as Environment : A Meta-Theory of AI as a Social Decision Environment

This paper proposes the concept of AI as Environment as a meta-theoretical frame-work for understanding structural transformations in contemporary socio-technical sys-tems. While artificial intelligence is often described as a technological tool or decision-support system, recent developments suggest that AI increasingly functions as part ofthe informational environment within which human judgement and social coordinationoccur.Rather than directly determining decisions, AI-mediated systems structure the in-formational conditions through which visibility, credibility, and opportunity signalscirculate. In such environments, human actors continue to interpret information andmake decisions, but the informational contexts guiding those decisions become increas-ingly shaped by algorithmic evaluation processes.From this perspective, artificial intelligence operates not as a governing authoritybut as an environmental layer that mediates informational exposure and evaluationsignals. This structural transformation provides a theoretical foundation for under-standing the emergence of AI-mediated social configurations, including the possibilityof an AI-Scored Society in which attention, credibility, and opportunity are continu-ously allocated through AI-mediated informational environments.By conceptualizing artificial intelligence as an informational environment, this pa-per offers a meta-theoretical framework for analyzing how visibility, trust, and socialevaluation increasingly emerge within AI-mediated informational ecologies.