Beneath the Hype: Engaging the Sociality of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is highly visible in today’s public media. With potential uses across domains such as healthcare, labour and transportation, its capacity to impact human lives is widely apparent. As it continues to enter into public view, concerns surrounding its research and application also arise. Here, narratives of techno-optimism, technological determinism, and dystopia often shape the AI imaginary with sensationalist displays of super-intelligence and existential concern. Counterpoised to these representations, this thesis investigates the sociality that inheres in everyday practices within artificial intelligence as emerging technology and as a field of study. Drawing on methods and scholarship from STS and socio-cultural anthropology, I explore the attitudes and experiences of specialists to analyze how entanglements of the socio-cultural, ethical and technical appear within more mundane, everyday practices of AI. Often overshadowed by popular, sensationalized understandings of technology, the focus on such experiences and practices allows for an initial view into a situated understanding of AI beneath the hype.