Sociological perspectives on artificial intelligence: A typological reading

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.