Beyond linearity: reimagining AI as a participant in circular bioeconomies

Abstract As artificial intelligence transitions from industry-exclusive tool to public-facing technology, society faces critical decisions about its integration into socioecological systems. This paper proposes a reimagining of AI as a synthetic participant in the circular bioeconomy (CBE)—a regenerative model emphasizing cyclical flows of resources, information, and energy. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and Donna Haraway’s posthumanism, we reconceptualize AI as a non-living organism capable of functioning within multispecies systems, analogous to viruses that shape ecosystems without conventional life. Conventional, in that it meets the standard biological criteria for like: metabolism, reproduction, and homeostasis. AI, like viruses, does not meet this biological criteria. Current AI applications in CBE—from biowaste recycling to precision agriculture—demonstrate both transformative potential and ethical concerns. While AI enables unprecedented efficiency through advanced algorithms and embodied robotics, it risks perpetuating extractive logics that treat information as a resource to be mined rather than circulated. Critical ethical challenges emerge including algorithmic bias amplifying inequalities, epistemic opacity eroding stakeholder trust, blurred accountability for AI-driven harm, displacement of human labor, and marginalization of indigenous and local ecological knowledge. Through examples in medicine and remote sensing, we argue that AI becomes a “friend” to the Circular Bioeconomy (CBE) only when designed as circular and relational rather than linear and extractive. This requires synthetic datasets preserving privacy, multimodal architectures enabling dimensional understanding, and human-machine-ecosystem feedback loops replacing terminal outputs with ongoing accountability. Ultimately, AI’s role depends on intentional design grounded in justice and multispecies dignity—transforming it from extractive tool into participant in shared regenerative futures.