Cognitive actors—both humans and artificial intelligence systems—are the fundamental units of agency in knowledge systems. Man-computer symbiosis and machine intelligence anticipated this convergence, but the line between human and machine intelligence is now actively blurring. AI systems are no longer mere tools—they create new knowledge. Protein structure prediction solved the fifty-year folding problem, generating predictions for over 200 million proteins. Automated research systems now complete the entire lifecycle from hypothesis to peer-reviewed manuscript. Foundation models discover novel artificial life simulations that humans never conceived. Cognitive actors are the locus where knowledge converts to decision, where information gains consequence, where agency meets accountability. The network does not distinguish between carbon and silicon; it recognizes only the capacity to act and to know.