Big Data & Society (Journal)

Description

Special Issue Artificial Intelligence Controversies

Do public controversies about AI matter, can they really make a difference to how AI becomes embedded in society? Since its inception, expert and public debates about Artificial Intelligence have been driven by metaphysical imaginaries of the coming supremacy of machine intelligence. As such, AI has always courted controversy and thrived on the idealisation of disruption. In the wake of today's boom in Generative AI, however, AI industry and scientists not only insist on Artificial Intelligence's innate capacity to revolutionalise science, the economy and humanity itself. They equally dominate expert, media and policy debates about the risks and harms that AI poses to society, culture and democracy. In this context, longstanding assumptions in social studies of science and technology (STS) about public controversy as a driving force in the democratization of science and innovation are put to a critical test. Can controversies about AI in research, policy and media really make a difference, or do they instead present pseudo-events, artificial interventions staged by powerful actors and designed to occupy the channels of media debates? In this Special Theme, social and cultural researchers of science, technology and media engage with this challenge by critically investigating, evaluating and reflecting on AI controversies of the last 10 years. Research articles show how expert debates about neural networks, deep learning and large language models since the mid-2010s have prepared the ground for the rise to prominence of an industry-driven discourse of boom and gloom across research, media and policy, but also sowed seeds for its problematisation by critical actors in science, policy, media and society. Other contributions offer critical reflections that question the very capacity of AI controversies to shift the path of AI's seemingly inevitable take-over of science, economy and society. A last set of contributions, finally, identifies efforts to reclaim techno-scientific controversy as a vector of democratization in an era defined by AI. They show how critical agencies across research, media, policy and activism are intervening in the framing and governance of AI by shifting attention from controversies to frictions: by focusing public attention on the disruptions and harms caused by AI-based socio-technical systems in everyday social life, critical agencies are gaining the capacity to problematise the unquestioned authority bestowed on techno-science by "AI."

Period	1 Jan 2023 → 1 Aug 2024
Type of journal	Journal
Degree of Recognition	International