Social Research on Generative AI between Actor-Network-Theory and Critique of Ideology

There are two seemingly opposite perspectives on how to reconstruct the connection between GenAI, society and human actors. The first one focusses on the observable interaction between social actors and GenAI-related applications. These interactions and connections can include end-users of applications, AI-companies or political actors. From the conducted observations, this first analytical perspective draws conclusions on why and how GenAI becomes part of society’s processes and social structures. This perspective resonates with the well-known Actor-network-theory (ANT). The opposite analytical perspective puts its focus on already existing structures of society and deduces probable developments of how GenAI will adapt to these structures. This second analytical perspective appears in different theoretical and methodological forms, one of them being post-Marxist theory. This opposition between empiricist and critical orientated positions reminds of the historical positivism dispute in social sciences: The widely unforgiving actors of this dispute quarreled on the question, how much knowledge on society one can win by solely leaning on empirical or critical-theoretical analytical perspectives.

This paper follows the assumption that an analysis of the connection between GenAI, society and human actors requires to overcome the segregation between empiricist and theory-founded perspectives on society. As the influence of GenAI on the users’ daily life often blurs, it is getting more important to develop innovative empirical methods to observe these processes. At the same time, the rise of GenAI falls into a time of advanced global techno-capitalism, where powerful companies will probably behave in a way that can be foreseen from ideology critical theories. To discuss the possible integration of empiricist and theory-based perspectives on GenAI, the paper contrasts the ANT as represented by Bruno Latour and the post-Marxist theory of Slavoy Žižek. Different prospects and restrictions in the development of such an integrated perspective and its consequences for social research are discussed.