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Paper short abstract

Our paper aims to deconstruct AI's "thingness" via an analysis of sociotechnical AI imaginaries in the German parliament and to reflect on the implications of including AI technologies as a subject in social research practices.

Paper long abstract

A key concern of a critical social research approach to "AI" is to question the "thingness" of AI and to 'make controversial' its status as a given, stable and agential entity (Suchman 2023). To carry out such critical undertaking and illuminate the deeply situated constructiveness of "AI", we need more studies that investigate how AI is envisioned, talked about, and used both in social research practices and within specific contexts. To contribute to these efforts, we explore how "AI" has been perceived and imagined by members of the German parliament in the past, and we reflect on the extent to which this perspective can be seen as a way of adopting, appropriating, and incorporating AI technologies into social research practices – as a subject rather than as a digital method.

Based on an examination of parliamentary speeches covering several decades, and drawing from the concept of "sociotechnical imaginaries" (Jasanoff & Kim 2015), we discuss implicit assumptions and values associated with "AI" by elected representatives of the Bundestag. Our STS study reveals how "AI" has been constituted, imagined, and strategically used in the Bundestag over time, thus deconstructing the view of "AI" as an ahistorical, fixed, and unchangeable entity, while at the same time revealing the contingency of its "thingness". Finally, we reflect on the kinds of realities that emerge from such a perspective and its implications for social research.