‘Where are the people? What are they doing? Why are they doing it?’(Mindell) Situating artificial intelligence within a socio-technical framework

This article explores the sociology of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on interactions between social actors and technological processes. The aim is to locate social actors in the key elements of Bell’s framework for understanding AI, featuring big data, algorithms, machine learning, sensors and rationale/logic. We dispute notions of human autonomy and machine autonomy, seeking alternatives to both anthropocentric and technological determinist accounts of AI. While human actors and technological devices are co-producers of the assemblages around AI, we challenge the argument that their respective contributions are symmetrical. The theoretical problem is to establish quite how human actors are positioned asymmetrically within AI processes. This challenge has strong resonances for issues of inequality, democracy, governance and public policy. The theoretical questions raised do not support the argument that sociology should respond to the rise of big data by becoming a primarily empirical discipline.