The Institute of Philosophy celebrated the defense of Gustavo Riesgo's doctoral thesis, an institutional milestone for the Doctorate in Philosophy with a focus on Foundations of Natural and Cognitive Sciences.

Today, August 19, 2026, the doctoral thesis defense took place. by Gustavo Riesgo, entitled "General Theory of Artificial Intelligence. An Interdisciplinary Epistemology of Knowledge Engineering", directed by Dr. Juan José Sanguineti. This is the first doctorate in Philosophy awarded by the Universidad Austral, an achievement that marks a milestone for the Universidad Austral, the Institute of Philosophy and for the Doctorate in Philosophy with a focus on Foundations of Natural and Cognitive Sciences.

The evaluation panel consisted of Dr. Ignacio del Carril (President of the Panel), professor of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, and Dr. Ignacio Aguinalde, professor of Philosophical Anthropology, both researchers at the Universidad Austral, together with Dr. Juan Kamienkowski, Independent Researcher of CONICET and professor of the Department of Computing at the University of Buenos Aires.

Riesgo's thesis addresses, from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates philosophy, computer science, and cognitive psychology, the question of the nature of artificial intelligence and its similarities and differences with human intelligence. The work is structured in three parts: a historical and conceptual overview of the development of AI (from GOFAI to connectionist models and the Transformer architecture); a critical epistemological analysis of computational information processing in comparison with human knowledge; and a proposed synthesis that culminates in a general theory of AI, characterized by the author as "Knowledge Engineering."

The tribunal highlighted the quality, thoroughness and depth of the doctoral work, awarded it the highest mark and suggested the publication of the thesis.