Machine Agencies

Abstract

This chapter builds on the phenomena of large language models (LLMs) to crystallize the outlines of a sociology of machines. LLMs pose many problems to our existing conceptions, especially the notion of agency in sociology, but at the same time present possibilities for developing a different kind of thinking. This chapter will problematize singular conceptions of agency that presuppose an individual actor, and develops an approach to understanding agency as a processual and collective achievement that includes human-machine socialities of different kinds. In discussing machine agencies, the chapter will first consider the figurations of human-machine relations that condition the possibility and stability of these models. Then, it will think through an event of machine authorship to both expose the limits of contemporary notions of agency and to propose a new way of looking at human-machine relations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the possibility of a sociology of machines founded on creative and playful methodologies and suggests this as a way to resist the dominant forms in which technology is commonly conceived.