Beyond Disruption and Invisibility: Interactional Continuity in Everyday AI Use in India

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: AI and Changing Social Norms

Abstract

Research on artificial intelligence (AI)’s social significance (e.g., journalism/communication, and organizational research), attention is often organized around two emphases: one foregrounds disruption, framing standalone generative AI (GenAI) tools as transformative; the other foregrounds infrastructure, treating embedded AI as backgrounded, invisible features of platform design. We bridge these emphases with interactional continuity, a user-centered frame that explains cross-modality incorporation at the level of task episodes: AI use stabilizes through sequential placement in ongoing activities, while interface packaging shapes whether it is perceived and named as AI. Grounded in infrastructure theory, platform studies, and digital meaning-making, we examine every day AI use in the Global South through 28 semi-structured interviews in an Indian workplace. We used iterative AI-assisted and manual coding to identify patterns. Importantly, we found that respondents used AI as episode-level task support within familiar platform routines, illustrating how disruption and invisibility can emerge from task sequencing and interface cues.

Authors

• Emilia Edwards, University of Texas-Austin

• Dhiraj Murthy, University of Texas at Austin