Vanessa Richter | Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence – Mapping (Social Media) Platforms’ Role in Shaping (Public) Tech Imaginaries

Vanessa Richter | Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence – Mapping (Social Media) Platforms’ Role in Shaping (Public) Tech Imaginaries | University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media and Culture | Supervisor(s): Prof Thomas Poell, Prof Christian Katzenbach | 11/2021 – 12/2025 | v.richter@uva.nl 

Artificial intelligence is considered a key technology today, although interpreted diversely and ambiguously. With the shift of AI products into everyday life, new fears of job loss and promises of easing work burdens are hatching, impacting large public investments into research and industry and are reflected in policy discourses and legislation. The imagination and future perception of what AI can and should become have led to different trajectories showcasing the importance of social and cultural discursive imagination in envisioning and determining trajectories of AI and its integration into society through such imaginaries. Social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok play an important role in this process as both stakeholders and spaces for ongoing AI discourse. Therefore, this PhD project questions the impact of (social media) platforms on AI imaginaries while considering different stakeholders from industry, politics, media, academia, and civil society. Particularly, the framework of socio-technical imaginaries broadly and platform imaginaries more specifically offer meaningful perspectives to analyse the characteristics and impact of imaginaries surrounding technological advances. As AI is in a formative phase – both as a technology and infrastructure –, it is particularly relevant to understand how imaginaries impact economic, research, and political agendas. Questioning who is pushing which agenda successfully above other potential lines of development becomes urgent in the current global climate often dubbed a ‘race of AI’.