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Paper short abstract

Although systemic risks of AI are already subject to regulation, there is a lack of understanding their systemic nature, characterized emergent effects at a societal or global level. Besides a complementary role, their analysis may contribute to an analytical connection to existential risks of AI.

Paper long abstract

The regulatory framework of the EU AI Act addresses systemic risks of AI, including risks that are often discussed as existential risks, such as CBRN attacks, loss of control, or large-scale cyberattacks. Risks are understood here as caused by individual AI providers or users. However, we are already observing feedback and amplification dynamics, rebound effects, emergence of damages by data-based inferences and transfers of proxies, non-linear increases in the severity of violations of human rights, structural dominance and dependencies, and failures cascading along more integrated value chains. These systemic risks arise from complex interactions between different actors or AI systems, threatening societal goals as emergent effects at the societal or global level. However, their ‘systemic nature’ is not adequately addressed by current risk assessment and governance.

Besides being a complementary approach, we share the view that the analysis of systemic risks may also serve as an analytical connection towards existential risks. While systemic risks to safety, security, and environmental protection may be connected to existential risks, this is open for fundamental rights and democracy. The latter should not be given less attention in research to avoid trade-offs or lacks in governance. They too should be investigated as potentially catastrophic rather through processes of accumulation and erosion. Overall, their assessing and governing necessitate a better understanding of complex processes of interacting causes, pathways of cascading, compound or accumulated risks, and erosion or collapse types of damages, including complex collective action problems or externalities, to which this paper would like to contribute.

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Paper short abstract

Developing an STS theorising of public inquiries, I examine the structure and practices of inquiries - exploring issues of epistemic injustice, public participation, and accountability - and track continuities and discontinuities with pasts and presents, and the futures they set in train.

Paper long abstract

Jasonoff (2005:218) famously stated that public inquiries are ‘Britain’s favoured mechanism for ascertaining the facts after any major breakdown or controversy’. Public inquiries are thus emblematic of the UK’s civic epistemology. However, in the 20 years since this foundational work, there has been little theorising of public inquiries from an STS perspective, despite ever increasing public demand for them. In this presentation, I develop an STS theorising of public inquiries, focusing on the space between the claim, by proponents, that inquiries provide catharsis for people harmed by public institutions meant to protect and care for them, and the claim, by critics, that they are a political tool for managing crisis that both distances governments from the scandal while showing decisive action that something is being done. I explore the repair work of inquiries where public institutions have caused harms, and societal breakdowns of trust have occurred. As a critical juncture at which scientific and public knowledges are enfolded to form recommendations for future practice, I examine the structure and practices of inquiries, and explore issues of epistemic injustice, public participation, and accountability. I question the ‘closure’ inquiries are proposed to enact and track the continuities and discontinuities with pasts and presents, and the futures they set in train.

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Paper short abstract

This paper presents a document analysis of expectations for artificial general intelligence in U.S. national newspapers, examining how AGI is constructed as an urgent and inevitable prospect, and what this does to present deliberation about a deeply uncertain and potentially catastrophic technology.

Paper long abstract

This paper presents a document analysis of expectations for artificial general intelligence (AGI) expressed in U.S. national newspapers. Drawing on the Sociology of Expectations, it aims to identify the types of expectations being expressed, their relative frequencies, how they have changed over time, and how credibility and legitimacy for AGI are established within the corpus. It also examines the performative effects of these expectations, tracing how anticipatory constructions of AGI shape present decisions about capital, infrastructure, governance, and risk.

Unlike many existing AI applications, AGI is not yet a stable technical object that can be observed directly. It exists primarily as a projected future, articulated through claims about capability, timelines, risk, promise, and social transformation. This makes its discursive formation not merely one dimension of AGI but central to how it acquires significance in the present. National newspapers constitute an important arena through which these visions reach broad public audiences who have limited independent means of evaluating them. Understanding what expectations those audiences have been exposed to, how they have changed over time, and how they have been made to appear credible and legitimate is therefore both analytically and politically significant.

The paper contributes to the panel's concerns by examining the discourse around AGI, which is closely tied to existential risk, and how this discourse displaces present deliberation in favour of futures defined by a small number of actors.

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Paper short abstract

Involving disaster survivors in defining the event they experienced is not just a method to collect rich and policy-informing research data, but also a reflective exercise that can empower participants unpack the catastrophic incident and consider their way forward making use of local knowledge.

Paper long abstract

This contribution utilises existing ethnographic data collected in the wake of an environmental disaster on the remote island of Samothráki, N.E. Greece. As part of ethnographic fieldwork, islanders had been asked to complete a short online survey, including selecting a definition for the catastrophic event from a closed-ended list, followed by a few open-ended questions about their personal experience with it (see: https://doi.org/10.22582/ta.v13i2.725). Respondents approached the survey as a reflective exercise and embarked on considering matters beyond the disaster itself, such as the liabilities of the local community and the actions that need to be taken in response, or their concerns about the future on/of the island.

Using this survey design and its key findings as a case study, we will consider how the public can be more actively involved in unpacking and making sense of disasters and risks, whether these feel near and imminent, or afar and abstract. Through a guided exercise, participants will be invited create their own fit-for-purpose reflective tool combining data collection with public engagement, focusing on empowering communities themselves make use of their local knowledge and experience to assess risk factors and determine response scenarios, in a structured way that can then be used to inform decision-making. We will also outline ethical considerations associated with this process and how to avoid research extractivism.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how firefighters make catastrophic wildfires actionable in real time. Drawing on operational briefings from the 2025 Palisades Fire, it shows how responders sustain coordination and decision-making as fires increasingly exceed established paradigms of control.

Paper long abstract

Wildfires are increasingly framed as symptoms of a broader climate crisis whose consequences appear catastrophic yet uncertain. While such risks are often discussed in abstract and global terms, responses must take place in concrete situations where action cannot be postponed. This paper examines how catastrophic wildfires become actionable within the practical work of wildfire response.

I focus on the Palisades Fire, which broke out on January 7, 2025, in the Santa Monica Mountains of Los Angeles County and became the most destructive wildfire in the history of the city. The fire spread rapidly through Pacific Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu, destroying more than 6,800 buildings before being contained on January 31. The scale and intensity of the fire challenged established paradigms of wildfire suppression that are historically oriented toward control and containment.

Empirically, the paper analyzes operational briefings and status reports produced during the firefighting operations between January 7 and January 31. Drawing on an ethnomethodological perspective and STS-inspired practice studies, I reconstruct how responders describe, interpret, and coordinate around the unfolding fire while being directly immersed in its dynamics. Particular attention is paid to how firefighters render the evolving situation intelligible “for all practical purposes” (Garfinkel) while confronting events that increasingly exceed established expectations of controllability.

By examining how catastrophic fires are rendered actionable in real-time coordination practices, the paper contributes to STS discussions about existential risk. It shows how abstract climate-related threats are translated into situated practices of sense-making, coordination, and decision-making during unfolding emergencies.