Coproduction, Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: A Perspective from Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

Over the past five years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been endorsed as the technical underpinning of innovation. Sensationalist representations of AI have also been accompanied by assumptions of technological determinism that distract from the ordinary, sometimes unassuming consequences of interaction with its systems and processes. Drawing on scholarship from cultural anthropology, along with science and technology studies (STS), this paper examines coproduction in a Canadian AI research and development context. Through interview responses and field observations it presents sites of sociotechnical entanglement and ethical discussion to highlight potential spaces of mediation for anthropological practice. Emerging themes from the experiences of AI specialists include the negotiability of technology, an ethics of the everyday and critical collaboration. Together this returns to an initial approach into a situated understanding of artificial intelligence, negotiating with broad, sensationalist perspectives and the more commonplace, backgrounded cases of narrow research.