We commonly think of society as made of and by humans, but with the proliferation of machine learning and AI technologies, this is clearly no longer the case. Billions of automated systems tacitly contribute to the social construction of reality by drawing algorithmic distinctions between the visible and the invisible, the relevant and the irrelevant, the likely and the unlikely – on and beyond platforms. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this book develops an original sociology of algorithms as social agents, actively participating in social life. Through a wide range of examples, Massimo Airoldi shows how society shapes algorithmic code, and how this culture in the code guides the practical behaviour of the code in the culture, shaping society in turn. The ‘machine habitus’ is the generative mechanism at work throughout myriads of feedback loops linking humans with artificial social agents, in the context of digital infrastructures and pre-digital social structures. Machine Habitus will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, media and cultural studies, science and technology studies and information technology, and to anyone interested in the growing role of algorithms and AI in our social and cultural life.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to seep into more areas of society and culture, critical social perspectives on its technologies are more urgent than ever before. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from experienced scholars across disciplines, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of critical AI studies.

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for approaching the causes and effects that digital technologies and the imaginaries related to them have on the processes of self-interpretation and subjectivation. It formulates three main theses. First, it argues that today’s digital technologies, which are primarily based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and big data are formidable habitus machines: they offer increasingly personalized services, but these machines are actually indifferent to individuals and their personalities. Second, this book contends that the effectiveness of these machines does not depend solely on their concrete capacity to classify the social world. It also depends on the expectations, hopes, fears, and imaginaries that we have concerning these technologies and their capacities. This cultural habitus—a worldview, or world picture—leads us to believe in the concrete effectiveness of AI and its potential for our societies. Third, the author takes this Bourdieusian notion of habitus and connects it to current “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology. He contends that, by looking too closely at the things themselves, many philosophers of technology have deprived themselves of the possibility to study the symbolic conditions of possibility in which single technological artifacts are always embedded. Digital Habitus will appeal to scholars and students working in philosophy of technology, the ethics of artificial intelligence, media studies, and science and technology studies.

How does automation affect us, our environment, and our imaginations? What actions should we take in response to automation? Beyond grand narratives and technology-driven visions of the future, what more can automation offer? With these questions in mind, The De Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures provides a framework for thinking about and implementing automation differently. It consolidates automated futures as an inter- and transdisciplinary research field, embedding the imaginaries, interactions, and impacts of automation technology within their social, historical, societal, cultural, and political contexts. Promoting a critical yet constructive and engaging agenda, the handbook invites readers to collaborate with rather than resist automation agendas. It does so by pushing the agenda for social science, humanities and design beyond merely assessing and evaluating existing technologies. Instead, the handbook demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences are essential to the design and governance of sustainable sociotechnical systems. Methodologically, the handbook is underpinned by a pedagogical approach to staging co-learning and co-creation of automated futures with, rather than simply for, people. In this way, the handbook encourages readers to explore new and alternative modes of research, fostering a deeper engagement with the evolving landscape of automation.

Machine learning algorithms are widely presumed to herald a world in which the crippling burdens of anxiety can be left behind. The digital revolution promises a brave new world where individuals, communities and organizations can at last take control of the future – anticipating, designing and commanding the future, possibly even with mathematical exactitude. Yet, paradoxically, algorithms have unleashed widespread fears and forebodings about the impact of digital technologies. Whether it’s worries about unemployment, distress about social media’s harmful effects on teenagers, or the fear of intrusive digital surveillance, we live in an age of turbo-charged anxiety where the prophecies of algorithms are increasingly enmeshed with fundamental disruption and anxieties about the future. In this book, Anthony Elliott examines how machine learning algorithms are not only transforming global institutions but also rewriting our personal lives. He tells this story through a wide-ranging analysis which takes in ChatGPT, Amazon, the Metaverse, Martin Ford, Netflix, Uber, Bernard Stiegler, Squid Game, Kate Crawford, LaMDA, Byung-Chul Han, autonomous drones, Jean Baudrillard and the automation of warfare. Questioning why people often assume that they need to adopt new technologies in order to lead fulfilling lives, Elliott argues that people may be as much entranced as inspired by their outsourcing of personal decision-making to smart machines.

It is widely known that – at least in current societies - culture depends on money. Less attention has been given to the contrary fact: money also depends on culture. In its very foundation - negotiations, values, exchanges, debts and obligations, contracts and laws – money's functioning is tied to cultural practices, institutions, identities, and meanings. This interdisciplinary anthology scrutinizes the two-way connection between culture and money, and its implications for economic theory. In this book a wide range of established experts and newcomers from a range of disciplines investigate current economic issues from the perspective of their social and cultural embeddedness, their cultural and literary negotiations and their history. In doing so, they highlight what mainstream economics has missed, or wilfully ignored: they analyze the cultural genealogy of economic notions and concepts that have been thought of as abstract, ‘scientific’ economic terms – such as the concept of “value”; they point toward social aspects of economic action hitherto unnoticed by economics, (including power, the relevance of institutions and the role of misfortune and failure). The book also explores the looming question about what happens when the cultural foundation of money is replaced by machinic algorithms. The volume provides a valuable contribution to cultural studies’ current ‘re-discovery’ of economic topics while taking a purposefully critical stance on this notion, as it puts particular emphasis on not just the theoretical significance but also the acute relevance of its findings. The book therefore addresses academic audiences across a wide field of disciplines, such as the social sciences, literary and cultural studies, economics and history.

Since their invention, computers have kept revolutionizing the world at a staggering pace. And yet, if on one side this ongoing revolution keeps providing an incessant stream of novel and previously unimaginable technologies, on the other, as with all revolutions, its profound effects threaten to upend much of the previous world order. Facing the many questions that this change is urgently raising will require to acquire a novel and interdisciplinary understanding of the powerful forces that govern this process. Sitting squarely at the crossroads of computer science, history, socioeconomics, ethics, and philosophy, and written by an insider who contributed foundational work to many of the latest and most pervasive technologies this book offers a much-needed reframing of the past, present and future of computing, that goes far beyond the typical chronological record of events and arms us with a uniquely broad and integrated analysis of their complex origins and their numerous side effects.