Social Dynamics of Expectations and Expertise: AI in Digital Humanitarian Innovation

Abstract

Public discourse typically blurs the boundary between what artificial intelligence (AI) actually achieves and what it could accomplish in the future. The sociology of expectations teaches us that such elisions play a performative role: they encourage heterogeneous actors to partake, at various levels, in innovation activities. This article explores how optimistic expectations for AI concretely motivate and mobilize actors, how much heterogeneity hides behind the seeming congruence of optimistic visions, and how the expected technological future is in fact difficult to enact as planned. Our main theoretical contribution is to examine the role of heterogeneous expertises in shaping the social dynamics of expectations, thereby connecting the sociology of expectations with the study of expertise and experience. In our case study of a humanitarian organization, we deploy this theoretical contribution to illustrate how heterogeneous specialists negotiate the realization of contending visions of “digital humanitarianism.”

Innovation in humanitarian assistance—a systematic literature review

“…However, they furthermore note that such innovations only give a competitive advantage within the existing rules, which are formed over extensive time periods and are rarely toppled by a single innovation. In the literature, technology is portrayed both as a driver and obstacle (Gaffey et al 2020;Pascucci 2019;Zwitter and Herman 2018;Dandurand et al 2020). The technological imperative is the idea that new technologies are essential and, hence, they must be developed and introduced in every context needed (Scott and Mars 2015).…”

Freezing out: Legacy media's shaping of AI as a cold controversy

“…As sources of information, these specialists possess legitimacy and specialised knowledge that empower them to shape coverage. However, having a detailed understanding of a domain does not make these actors objective or accurate when they share their expectations of how a technology will shape the world (Dandurand et al, 2020). ‘Even a reporter that is really, really good in math or in data science’, explains a freelancer, may find it difficult to challenge experts who possess acute technical knowledge, especiallywhen you face Yoshua Bengio or other similar personalities [that are] good communicators.…”