Artificial intelligence, on-line culture, artificial sociality: definition of the terms

Abstract

There is a growing attention from media, politicians, public at large as well as from computer science and technology scholars on artificial intelligence (AI). However, much less attention is paid to AI by researchers in social sciences, their publications are widely scattered throughout the conference proceedings and vary considerably in terms of both level of difficulty and substantive application. It therefore seems wise to attempt to capture the essentials that will orient current social analytics in terms of productive theoretical and empirical research of AI. This paper is oriented exactly to this objective. The particular goal of the article is to present specific definitions of “artificial intelligence” (AI), “artificial sociality” (AS), and “online culture” (OC). It is intended only to open the discussion, not close it. The paper begins with an overview of the conceptual and theoretical issues that limit productive research of AI by social sciences. The authors argue that AI belongs to such multilevel singularities that have to be conceptually differentiated as a ‘phenomenon’, ‘term’, and ’problem’. They discuss theoretical, methodological, and experimental difficulties in capturing the essence of ‘AI’, ‘AS’, ‘OC’ and present their definition of these phenomena as well as contour the further research.

Acknowledgments. The study is supported by Russian Science Foundation (grant no. 18-18-00097).