Sociology of artificial intelligence : how AI will transform work, unemployment and our future

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is one of the hot themes of the current public discussion with accounts associating it with transformations in especially manufacturing sectors which is usually expected to lead to massive unemployment. The public is keen on speculating about which jobs will be made redundant by the rise of AI and ultimately disappear. In addition to factories, the health sector is one of the sites of contestations as many medical tasks are getting automated. Some other scholars do not agree with this panic atmosphere. They claim that like any other industrial transformation, the rise of AI will also create new jobs. Although social implications of the rise of AI are under the spot, it is hard to come up with a single view among various views shared by scholars of various disciplines and strands of research. This article summarizes and elaborates on various positions on the topic, with a sociologically critical perspective, keeping an eye on AI’s highly likely role in exacerbating the already biting social inequalities and injustice. The sociology of artificial intelligence is delineated along with the ethical issues raised by the expansion of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, keeping the possibility of a humane artificial intelligence in mind.