The Culture of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract
This chapter tackles the problem of thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a social phenomenon and considers what it means to talk about the 'culture of AI'. It shows that dealing with the culture of AI does not imply that the investigator must restrict his or her sociological probings to the effect of 'intelligent' computers on individuals or society, but, rather, that he or she must also tackle the social milieu and tradition behind the groups who are the originators and disseminators of the ideas and ways of thinking which characterise AI. The chapter deals with the premature foreclosure or restriction of sociology to questions of social impact. It shows the way in which social impacts are conceived in deterministic terms. The foreclosure of sociology also arises with respect to those studies concerned with the social impact of AI, which have similarly ignored the social processes which have shaped and indeed constituted the very products of this area of computing.