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

• Duration: 2021 – 2024
• Project lead: Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach

Team: Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach, Dr. Anna Jobin, Laura Liebig, Licina Güttel

Partners: Medialab at Sciences Po, Paris, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methods (CIM) at the University of Warwick, and the NENIC Lab at INRS Montreal, as well as the Algorithmic Media Observatory at Concordia University

Funding: Open Research Area (ORA) funding line from DFG, ANR, ESRC, SSHRC

“Artificial intelligence” (AI) is currently in a phase of social establishment. Politicians, experts and start-up founders tell us that AI will fundamentally change how we live, communicate, work and travel tomorrow. Autonomous vehicles, disease detection, energy and climate protection, automatic filtering of misinformation and hate speech – AI is set to solve the major problems of our time. At the same time, however, it is also becoming clear that increasing automation could increase social and economic inequality, exacerbate the opacity of decision-making processes and ultimately call human autonomy into question. The further development of the technology is also controversial in the scientific field itself, with different paths and approaches vying for importance and resources; after all, AI was not always synonymous with deep learning, as seems to be taken for granted today.

This combination of dynamic technological developments, fundamental controversies and massive investments became the starting point for the “Shaping AI” project. This multinational collaboration of partners in Germany, France, the UK and Canada conducted a comparative longitudinal study of how AI is being integrated into our societies as a socio-technical institution.

The project employed a range of methods, including historical, ethnographic and computational methods, as well as the Media Lab’s cartografie de controverses, to examine the discourse and developments around the AI ‘deep learning’ revolution over the ten formative years from 2012 to 2021 in the four partner countries and in three key areas. Media analysis examined AI debates in major news media, niche websites and social media conversations. Policy analysis mapped and analyzed existing policy initiatives, white papers and regulatory approaches in each country. The research analysis captured publications, co-citations and the development of sub-disciplines and sub-communities in the research field. Quantitative methods as well as ethnographic participation in relevant workshops and conferences were used for this purpose. In addition, the project investigated and initiated public engagement formats, including workshops that enabled stakeholders and members of the public to debate and negotiate AI pathways.

This research design enabled the project to understand how AI is currently institutionalized and at the same time it contributed to its further shaping. AI is a very vague concept and therefore remains socially and technically highly open to development. AI could also be considered differently – or even completely unacceptable in certain areas. In this international three-year project Shaping AI, we uncovered the creeping institutionalization of AI beyond the hype. On this basis, we as a society can better ensure the development of AI for the common good.

The project builded on longer-term work at the HIIG on the discursive and political construction of AI and the development of the digital society.

Further information can be found here.

Publications and other academic contributions