• Being a doctoral researcher at the Research Unit

The Communicative Construction of Transcendence within Pioneer Communities of ComAI

PhD project of Carolin Müller

Imaginations of transcendence have long been entangled within tech-savvy areas. For instance, ideas of transhumanism have influenced imaginations of how humanity might transcend boundaries of the human body with the help of technological advances. Communicative AI is no exception: it, too, is linked to transgressive experiences and imaginaries. It is not solely the narratives of companies that challenge these tangible boundaries with their products that play a role here. So-called pioneer communities also participate in these processes. These communities assign themselves a central role as thought leaders in the conceptualisation and evolution of their respective domains. Therefore, this doctoral thesis will examine how imaginations of transcendence regarding communicative AI are communicatively constructed by pioneer communities. The focus lays upon the effective altruists and the decentralised Blockchain network Ethereum – two groups with distinct approaches when it comes to the possibilities and futures of communicative AI. Its primary focus is on the external communication of these pioneer communities in order to evaluate the extent to which imaginations of transcendence are adopted as narratives. In particular, the analysis will focus on the strategies of imagination and legitimisation employed by these communities. To examine these aspects, the study draws on narrative interviews with experts from both groups as well as various published materials, such as blog and forum posts, white papers and websites, and subjects them to qualitative analyses based on grounded theory methodology.

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• Carolin Müller