AI’s Sociological Era

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a social structure cloaked in technical blackboxes and polarizing narratives. Sociology is the study of society from a structural perspective, delineating the interplays between individuals, organizations, institutions, and cultures. Sociology’s disciplinary lens is necessary to understand AI’s infrastructural force, reflecting and shaping politics, economies, knowledge, and interpersonal spheres. Yet to date, the field of AI research has been dominated by computer science and engineering, underutilizing the explanatory power of sociological theories and methods honed by the discipline over more than a century. Building on a collection of papers that illustrate AI as both a product and driver of social patterns and processes, we demonstrate that the diffusion of AI necessitates sociological analyses now more than ever, positioning sociology at the forefront of AI studies’ next era.