This Mess We're In: Sociological Perspectives of Generative AI

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5. Theorizing Economy

Abstract

Over the past year, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced from science fiction into reality. To some, AI is a threat – due to the possibility of AI replacing workers, or the catastrophic scenario of AI dominating humanity a la The Terminator. For others, AI is potentially beneficial – it is viewed as something that will, overall, increase the quality of human lives. At this stage, predictions of the future impacts of AI on human life are dubious at best, and hyperbolic at worst. This essay integrates aspects of the theoretical perspectives of Foucault and Baudrillard to present a view of the potential social impacts of artificial intelligence and its relationship with human social life. However, there is no pretense that this perspective is an accurate prediction of the future. Rather, the intention of this essay is to contribute a sociological perspective to the ongoing body of discussion about AI in two ways: how artificial intelligence can come to mediate human to human interaction, and how human to AI interaction can supplant human interaction entirely. In a worst case scenario, these two aspects of the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence could represent a quite literal version of “the end of the social” – and the replacement of human social life as we know it with something very different. As with all futurism, of course, the analysis presented here can be viewed with suspicion; this is but one set of possibilities for the evolution of artificial intelligence in the human world, no more likely than any other scenario. The concern I intend to present here is not that this scenario will materialize – but that if it does, we are less likely to recognize the way artificial intelligence is reshaping society.

Author

• David Borton, University of Delaware