{"title":"Exploring AI-in-the-making: Sociomaterial genealogies of AI performativity","authors":"Susan V. Scott , Wanda J. Orlikowski","doi":"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2025.100558","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent interest in artificial intelligence technologies has led to much discussion about what the age of AI portends for how we live and work. And specifically for the present discussion, what it means for agency. In offering our contributions to these considerations, we build on approaches to treat AI not as a “thing” but as phenomena in-the-making. Such a framing orients us to doings, to practices, to enactments, and consequential outcomes. These considerations of AI-in-the-making are inspired by agential realism, a theory that calls attention to performativity and accountability. Based on these ideas, we propose a sociomaterial genealogical approach that we suggest is well-suited for the study of AI-in-the-making. In so doing, we provide qualitative scholars with a way of orienting their inquiries toward the performativity of ongoing AI reconfigurations and sociomaterial accountabilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47253,"journal":{"name":"Information and Organization","volume":"35 1","pages":"Article 100558"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information and Organization","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772725000041","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Recent interest in artificial intelligence technologies has led to much discussion about what the age of AI portends for how we live and work. And specifically for the present discussion, what it means for agency. In offering our contributions to these considerations, we build on approaches to treat AI not as a “thing” but as phenomena in-the-making. Such a framing orients us to doings, to practices, to enactments, and consequential outcomes. These considerations of AI-in-the-making are inspired by agential realism, a theory that calls attention to performativity and accountability. Based on these ideas, we propose a sociomaterial genealogical approach that we suggest is well-suited for the study of AI-in-the-making. In so doing, we provide qualitative scholars with a way of orienting their inquiries toward the performativity of ongoing AI reconfigurations and sociomaterial accountabilities.
期刊介绍:
Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.