Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Research on AI policy argues that desirable futures are found in policy. The role of disruptive claims in normalising AI remains under explored. This paper reads Stiegler’s concept of disruption through STS to argue that disruption alters ideas of the future and enables state ideas of technology.

Paper long abstract

The deployment of AI in society has been accompanied by claims of disruption across multiple government ministries and organisations. Generalised disruption is claimed across key sectors of society, making spaces for technological adoption. This paper examines the concept of disruption in AI policies between the Global North and the Global South as a call to specific visions of the future, where AI is normalised and essential to enhance the functioning of society. This paper utilises the concept of Socio-technical Imaginaries (SI), which emphasises policy analysis as a means to understand desirable futures. Research has already discussed SI in AI strategy contexts. However, the role of disruption in AI policy and desirable futures remains underexplored, despite disruption being discussed as a component of emerging technologies (Hopster, 2021). This paper synthesises Bernard Stiegler’s disruption, an epochal event that renders citizens in algorithmic and data societies unable to visualise the future (Stiegler, 2019), with the state-governed visions of futures proposed by SI research. This paper argues through Stiegler and SI, that conceptualising disruption should include its potential to rationalise technology adoption, especially for citizens in algorithmic societies. The paper expands on current theorisations of disruption and citizen-state relations discussed within Stiegler’s work.

Hopster, J. (2021). What are socially disruptive technologies? Technology in Society, 67, 101750. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101750

Stiegler, B. (with Ross, D., Jugnon, A., & Nancy, J.-L.). (2019). The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism (Reprinted). Polity Press.