Shapes of AI controversies on Twitter: impressionistic rendering of the width and depth of in scope conversations on Twitter for selected AI controversies. Click the image for a pdf version.

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The Shaping AI teamLink opens in a new window at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick) has published a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Big Data & Society entitled: "AI as super-controversy. Eliciting AI and society controversies with an extended expert community in the UK."Link opens in a new window Based on online expert consultation, social media analysis and a participatory workshop, the research article by Noortje Marres, Michael Castelle, Beatrice Gobbo, Chiara Poletti and James Tripp shows how AI is not like other controversial technologies, such as nuclear or CRISPR. In the case of AI, its proponents openly confirm that this innovation is harmful to society, and it is widely understood as affecting all domains of society, not just specific sectors (say energy, or health). Furthermore, their empirical analysis shows that civil society activists and AI and Society researchers have developed distinctive strategies for problematizing AI, which mobilise incidents and frictions in society to demonstrate how AI affects society on the level of public infrastructure, social justice and knowledge politics. In other words, AI is a super-controversy, which links technicalities with structural problems in society.