Between Humans and Machines: The social construction of the generative AI category

Abstract

ChatGPT’s debut in 2022 heralded the entry of generative AI into mainstream public attention. The radical technology could do what no machine had done before: mimic humans’ complex linguistic abilities. The ghost had entered the machine. In their essay, Phillips, Kalvapalle and Kennedy (2024) argue that one of the important aspects of generative AI is that it participates in the social construction of categories. Many other technologies also participate in the social construction of categories, yet this process often goes unnoticed. Why? We argue that the degree to which technologies are perceived to participate in the social construction process depends on three elements: the degree to which we anthropomorphize the technology, whether its affordances allow for easy interaction, and the vested interests of powerful stakeholders. We agree that humans and machines co-construct categories, but we argue that this process is itself socially constructed through an iterative process among participating stakeholders.