{"title":"I gotta use words when I talk to you: Primed suspension of disbelief in views on agency in relation to Artificial Intelligence","authors":"Matthew Jones","doi":"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2025.100557","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The public launch of generative AI systems in 2022 has prompted considerable popular interest in their potential to transform work and to achieve the long-sought goal of machine intelligence. While the uncanny abilities of Large Language Models to produce fluent text on almost any subject lends these ideas some plausibility, they are based on debatable, if not erroneous, claims about the capabilities of generative AI. Although rarely presented in these terms, these claims may be seen to reflect a limited, substantive conception of the agency of AI systems. Alternative conceptualisations of agency from other disciplines are presented that may offer potentially more fruitful ways of thinking about agency in relation to AI. The way that conceptions of the agency of AI systems is shaped by the language used to describe their behaviour is highlighted and opportunities for alternative conceptions of agency to inform a more critical analysis of generative AI are identified.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47253,"journal":{"name":"Information and Organization","volume":"35 1","pages":"Article 100557"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","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/S147177272500003X","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
The public launch of generative AI systems in 2022 has prompted considerable popular interest in their potential to transform work and to achieve the long-sought goal of machine intelligence. While the uncanny abilities of Large Language Models to produce fluent text on almost any subject lends these ideas some plausibility, they are based on debatable, if not erroneous, claims about the capabilities of generative AI. Although rarely presented in these terms, these claims may be seen to reflect a limited, substantive conception of the agency of AI systems. Alternative conceptualisations of agency from other disciplines are presented that may offer potentially more fruitful ways of thinking about agency in relation to AI. The way that conceptions of the agency of AI systems is shaped by the language used to describe their behaviour is highlighted and opportunities for alternative conceptions of agency to inform a more critical analysis of generative AI are identified.
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.