Sociological perspectives on artificial intelligence: A typological reading

Abstract

Interest in applying sociological tools to analysing the social nature, antecedents and consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) has been rekindled in recent years. However, for researchers new to this field of enquiry, navigating the expansive literature can be challenging. This paper presents a practical way to help these researchers to think about, search and read the literature more effectively. It divides the literature into three categories. Research in each category is informed by one analytic perspective and analyses one "type" of AI. Research informed by the "scientific AI" perspective analyses "AI" as a science or scientific research field. Research underlain by the "technical AI" perspective studies "AI" as a meta-technology and analyses its various applications and subtechnologies. Research informed by the "cultural AI" perspective views AI development as a social phenomenon and examines its interactions with the wider social, cultural, economic and political conditions in which it develops and by which it is shaped. These analytic perspectives reflect the evolution of "AI" from chiefly a scientific research subject during the twentieth century to a widely commercialised innovation in recent decades and increasingly to a distinctive socio-cultural phenomenon today. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

A sociotechnical perspective for the future of AI: narratives, inequalities, and human control

“…The need for a sociological conception of AI lies in the missing link to consistent social sciences empirical studies. Existing research is predominantly driven by the technical possibility (machine learning and neural network) applied to social and economic phenomena rather than being spurred by theoretically grounded research questions (Liu, 2021). To be more explicit, in the former case AI systems are more probably blind to social complexity (inequality, diversity, power structures) while in the latter sociological possibilities could inform and drive technological development.…”

Social impacts of algorithmic decision-making: A research agenda for the social sciences

“…Social science research on inequality and ADM systems as well as interactions between algorithms and humans goes far beyond what we were able to cover here (e.g. Joyce et al, 2021;Liu, 2021). Other challenges range from, for example, accounting for the agency of algorithms (Lange et al, 2019), social and political challenges with respect to regulation (Mittelstadt, 2019), privacy (Anthony et al, 2017), and governance (Danaher et al, 2017), to artificial intelligence shifting power relationships (Kalluri, 2020), or other social impacts beyond inequality outcomes.…”

“…Scholars from various disciplines have called for examining algorithmic outcomes to avoid or mitigate undesired consequences of ADM (Kusner and Loftus, 2020; Zou and Schiebinger, 2018). Previous research from computer science (Mehrabi et al, 2019), legal studies (Wachter, 2020), and philosophical (Mittelstadt et al, 2016) perspectives discussed algorithmic, structural, and ethical problems with ADM. Joyce et al (2021) and Liu (2021) provide a general overview of sociological perspectives on related artificial intelligence.…”

Yapay Zekâ Sosyolojisi Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme

“…Yapay zekâya ilişkin yakın dönemde sosyoloji içinde ilginin hızlandığı söylenebilir (Liu, 2021). Yapay zekâ üzerine sosyoloji içerisindeki tartışma ve çalışmaları iki genel paradigma içinde sınıflandırmak mümkündür: Birincisi, yapay zekâyı toplumsal ve kültürel bir inşa, toplumsal bir sorun alanı olarak ele alan hümanist (insan-merkezci) yaklaşım, ikincisi ise genelde teknolojiyi özelde ise yapay zekânın toplumsal bir fail olarak düşünülmesi gerektiğine vurgu yapan post-fenomonoloji ve Latouryen sosyolojinin etkisindeki post-humanist yaklaşım.…”