Concept

The prevalence of speech assistants taking orders, social bots influencing debates, and machines generating texts underscores the increasing sophistication of automated communication. Simultaneously, public discourse on these phenomena reflects the associated challenges. It seems that the intricacies of today’s complex societies compel a reliance on automation to meet communication needs, while also generating additional issues for which automated communication appears to be the most plausible solution. 

We refer to the phenomena of today’s automated communication systems as Communicative Artificial Intelligence(ComAI). Despite the diversity among the examples above, they share characteristics that warrant comprehensive investigation: ComAI is (1) based on various technologically advanced forms of automation for the purpose of communication, (2) embedded within digital infrastructures, and (3) closely entangled with human practices. The thesis of our proposed Research Unit (RU) is that the emergence of ComAI signifies a gradual but profound transformation of our media environment, carrying significant consequences— risks and opportunities—for societal communication. For this reason, we pose the question: How will societal communication change when communicative AI becomes a part of it?

By societal communication we understand all forms of communication that are essential for the communicative construction of society. With this understanding we want to signify that ComAI stands for much more than human-machine interaction, but can encompasses various kinds of public, (inter-)personal and group communication, each of which is situated and emerges in particular social domain. With this perspective we focus on the comprehensive chains and (side-)consequences of communication with ComAI, as well as on the range of embedded biases and related social inequalities. In research area 1 (RA1) we investigate the sociomaterial constitution of ComAI in multiple dimensions, in research area 2 (RA2) its appropriation in social domains.

When it comes to the dimensions of sociomaterial constitution (RA1), we are interested in the pioneers who are imagining ComAI (P1), its implementation in terms of particular interfaces (P2), its juridification in law (P3), and in the ordering of ComAI through companies’ governance (P4). In our research on social domains (RA2), we investigate the appropriations of ComAI and the challenges it raises. We address how autonomy is challenged by automation in journalism (P5), how deliberation is redefined when ComAI actively participate in public discourse (P6), how companionship in the personal sphere is refigured (P7), how healthcare transforms through ComAI (P8), and how learning and teaching is renegotiated when ComAI enters education (P9). 

To accommodate this investigation, we conceptualize ComAI as part of hybrid figurations that develop new kinds of supra-individual agency in the coming together of humans and machines. Such research requires an interdisciplinary team that is able to address the relevant dimensions and domains. This is why we work together as scholars from communication studies, sociology including science and technology studies, law, and informatics.

With ComAI we are exploring a technology-related change at its nascent stage. For this reason, it is necessary to break new methodological ground. Our exploration will harness empirical social science methods as well as methods from computational social science, digital methods, and methods of human-computer-interaction. A special component that we want to establish for our RU is the ComAI Research Space to jointly analyze the societal discourse on ComAI, to monitor the spread of its technologies, and to conduct scenario and audit research on possible future developments. We will collaboratively work with trend scouts within a framework of citizen science. In the first funding period, we investigate the emergence and constructions of ComAI. In the second funding period, we plan repeat studies to investigate related transformations of societal communication and outline normative conclusions on the Gestaltung of ComAI to promote “justice” and a “good life”.Due to the accelerating spread of ComAI and the societal risks and the (re)productions of inequality associated with it, there is nowan urgent need for its critical exploration. Only in this way will it be possible to lay the foundations for the promotion of a kind of automated communication which is appropriate for present societal challenges. We, as an internationally established interdisciplinary group of researchers have the collective research experience, the necessary field access, and the methodological expertise to do so.

ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE RESEARCH UNIT:

Hepp, A., Loosen, W., Dreyer, S., Jarke, J., Kannengießer, S., Katzenbach, C., Malaka, R., Pfadenhauer, M., Puschmann, C., Schulz, W. (2023). ChatGPT, LaMDA and the hype around Communicative AI: The automation of communication as a field of research in media and communication studies. Human-Machine Communication, 6, 41-63.  https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.6.4