Epistemic Dilemmas and the Metaphysics of Power in an AI Era: A Preliminary Inquiry

Institutional assessments of capacity and authority rely in part on portable indicators, including qualifications, publicly recognized outputs, monetary claims, and organizational positions. AI-mediated production can broaden the range of histories compatible with similar observable expressions, complicating inferences from particular outputs to historical contribution or prospective capacity. Situated observation, shared practice, and co-experience provide additional avenues to relational knowledge; their reach is constrained by finite time, attention, access, consent, and interpretive resources. This preliminary inquiry develops a context-dependent conception of generative-relational power as feasible influence over developmental transitions and the operative conditions of further action. It investigates when such capacities admit preorder or quotient partial-order comparisons while suspending judgment on the ontological primacy of these representations. It also examines how evaluative criteria and institutional allocations can alter future opportunities, producing recursive forms of meta-power. The argument distinguishes observable achievement, generative capacity, institutional recognition, and legitimate authority. Conditional AI-intensive scenarios and an empirical research programme clarify the framework's scope, possible uses, and limits.