STS

  • Large Technical System

    The conception of AI as a Large Technical System (LTS) – system artefact, system technology, infrastructural technology (Vannuccini & Prytkova 2020) “The study of AI as LTS uncovers active mechanisms of control and coordination, helps to identify types of actors and their incentives and to detect critical nodes of the system.” (Vannuccini and Prytkova, 2020,…

  • sociotechnical blindness

    “Absence of discussion of the role played by programmers and other human actors in creating AI is another problem in current AI discourse that leads to misunderstanding and fear. What we call sociotechnical blindness, i.e. blindness to all of the human actors involved and all of the decisions necessary to make AI systems, allows AI…

  • Sociotechnical ensembles

    “An AI system consists of a computational artefact together with the human behaviour and people who make the artefact a useful and meaningful entity. […] Sociotechnical ensembles are combinations of artefacts, human behaviour, social arrangements and meaning. For any computational artefact to be used for a real-world purpose, it has to be embedded into some…

  • technological determinism

    “…the view that material forces, and especially the properties of available technologies, determine social events. […] the central idea us that technological changes force social adaptations, and consequently constrain the trajectories of history.” (Sismondo 2010: 96) “Determinism inhibits the development of democratic controls on technology because it suggests that all interventions are futile. This is…