Entangled Twins
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Research

The Entangled Twins framework

Industry 5.0 asks technology to be human-centered, resilient, and sustainable. We argue that reaching this goal requires rethinking what a Digital Twin is — not a mirror of a person, but an entangled partner in a shared, co-constituted activity.

From representation to entanglement

Classic Digital Twins represent a person or system as a passive virtual replica. Drawing on Karen Barad's agential realism, we propose Entangled Twins: a relational configuration produced through intra-action rather than interaction between pre-existing, separate parts. Agency is not a property either side holds alone — it emerges from the agential cuts that provisionally draw the boundary between human and AI system.

The We-subject

Drawing on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, we model human-AI interaction as a plural, co-constituted "We-subject" — agency that emerges between the two parties, not inside either one alone.

An ethics of entanglement

If agency is shared, responsibility can no longer be assigned to a single side of the interaction. We examine what human-centered design and accountability look like once entanglement, not representation, is the starting point — with implications for Industry 5.0.