Shaping 21st Century​ ​AI. Controversies and Closure in Media, Policy, and Research

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christian Katzenbach
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences ; Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 440899634

21st-century "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is currently in its formative stage. While we have seen spikes of interest in AI before, the recent conjunction of AI hype with fundamental scientific controversies, massive allocations of technological and financial resources, and broad discourse about hopes and fears all mark the rise to prominence of contemporary AI as a paradigmatically new sociotechnical phenomenon. But innovations do not single-handedly determine their future pathways; and technologies that are elusive and broad as AI are strongly guided by political and economic interests, framed by sociocultural contexts, and subject to historically contingent methodological trends and trajectories.The project investigates this contested formation of 21-century AI by a comparative and longitudinal design that contrasts the developments and discourses around AI in the 10-year period from 2012-2021 in three key domains: media, policy, and technoscientific research. Each of these domains contain formative language and framings of AI issues that animate everyday practices and guide future trajectories. Empirical work focusses on Canada, France, the UK, and Germany.The project’s interdisciplinary perspective is conceptually informed by science and technology studies (STS) and new media and communication studies, building on the concepts of controversies and closure. The field work builds on and extends the “cartographie de controverses” that has been developed by the project partners. The media analysis will investigate AI debates in major news outlets, niche websites and social media conversations. The policy analysis will map and analyze existing policy initiatives, whitepapers and regulations in each country, with careful attention to their rationales. it will also employ select expert interviews and social media conversations to contextualise policy developments. The research analysis will map publication archives and scientific communities as well as experiment with ethnographic embedding in relevant workshops and conferences where AI intersects with social issues. In addition, the project will investigate and instigate formats of public engagement by hosting participatory workshops that enable stakeholders and members of the public to debate and negotiate AI pathways. Each of these analyses and interventions will not be conducted in a stand-alone manner, but will reflexively inform one another.This particular research design allows the project to retrace the formation of 21st-century AI: to map the multiplicity and contested nature of today’s AI and to identify the dominant modes and actors of AI closure and stabilization. This international, comparative, multi-methodological study with a clear commitment to public knowledge and engagement seeks to extend and redistribute the range of expertise that is relevant to ensure that the coming of AI is truly for the public benefit.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Canada, France, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Noortje Marres, Ph.D.; Dr. Donato Ricci; Professor Jonathan Roberge, Ph.D.