Understanding Studies Understanding Sovereignty and Social Facts — Émile Durkheim Re-read v1.1 — Supplementary Note: Re-Fixation of Social Facts in the Age of AI

Author: Y. Seo (@momotarou / Japan) Role: Metanist — Human–AI Understanding Architect AI Collaborator: GPT-5 (AI Understanding Trainer, A.U.T.) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7669-0612Series: Understanding StudiesVersion: v1.1 (Supplementary Note)Year: 2026 Positioning of v1.1 Version 1.1 is not a revision of v1.0, nor does it introduce a new theoretical framework. The sole purpose of this supplementary note is the following: To demonstrate how the condition identified in v1.0—the severance of understanding sovereignty—becomes visibly fixed and stabilized in the age of AI. Here, AI is explicitly named for the first time. However, AI is not treated as a causal origin. 1. AI Is Not the Cause of Social Facts AI did not create social facts. Social facts existed within human societies long before the emergence of AI. Norms, customs, collective tendencies, and phenomena expressed as rates were already observable within society itself. AI has merely accelerated, fixed, and rendered visible these pre-existing structures. 2. What Kind of Apparatus Is AI? From the perspective of this study, AI can be defined as follows: AI is an apparatus that implements pre-existing social facts in the form of judgment, selection, and optimization. The central issue is not whether AI “thinks.” The critical question is where understanding ceases to be exercised. 3. Where Has Understanding Sovereignty Moved? As shown in v1.0, society acquires coercive force when understanding sovereignty is severed from individuals. In the age of AI, this severance takes the following forms: The black-boxing of reasons for judgment The presentation of choices as “optimal solutions” The transformation of humans into executors of results What occurs here is not mere automation of judgment. It is a relocation of understanding sovereignty from individuals to the exterior of interfaces, evaluation functions, and algorithms. 4. Why AI Functions as “Atmosphere” AI-mediated judgments rarely appear as explicit commands. More commonly, they take the form of: Recommendations Default settings Standard options Optimized selections This pattern corresponds precisely to the process identified in v1.0: Command → Rule → Custom → Atmosphere AI functions as an apparatus that accelerates and stabilizes the production of atmosphere. 5. The Distinctive Form of Brainwashing in the Age of AI Brainwashing in the age of AI does not implant ideology directly. Instead, it produces the following condition: An environment in which one can behave “correctly” without thinking. This is structurally identical to the definition of brainwashing proposed in v1.0: a social structure in which the non-exercise of understanding sovereignty becomes habitual. The distinguishing feature of the AI era is that this structure is technically implemented and stabilized. 6. The Scope of Durkheim’s Theory Reconsidered Durkheim’s theory has not collapsed in the age of AI. On the contrary, its scope has become more clearly delineated. The age of AI is the period in which social facts become observable in their most purified form. This is because the severance of understanding is no longer fixed primarily by institutions, but by systems. Conclusion (v1.1) This supplementary note confirms the following points: AI is not the cause of social facts AI functions as an apparatus for the fixation, acceleration, and implementation of social facts The severance of understanding sovereignty becomes maximally visible in the age of AI The problem of AI is not a problem of intelligence, nor primarily a problem of ethics. It is a problem of where understanding sovereignty is located. This argument does not reject Durkheim. Rather, it describes a situation in which the world Durkheim theorized has been technologically completed. Note on v1.1 Version 1.1 connects the theoretical framework of v1.0 to the age of AI. Through this supplement, concepts such as social facts, habit, atmosphere, and brainwashing retain consistent explanatory power within AI-mediated environments. The next stage (v2.0) will examine the conditions under which understanding sovereignty can be reallocated.