1st Edition

The Routledge Social Science Handbook of AI

Edited By Anthony Elliott Copyright 2021
    386 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    386 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Routledge Social Science Handbook of AI is a landmark volume providing students and teachers with a comprehensive and accessible guide to the major topics and trends of research in the social sciences of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as surveying how the digital revolution – from supercomputers and social media to advanced automation and robotics – is transforming society, culture, politics and economy.

    The Handbook provides representative coverage of the full range of social science engagements with the AI revolution, from employment and jobs to education and new digital skills to automated technologies of military warfare and the future of ethics. The reference work is introduced by editor Anthony Elliott, who addresses the question of relationship of  social sciences to artificial intelligence, and who surveys various convergences and divergences between contemporary social theory and the digital revolution.

    The Handbook is exceptionally wide-ranging in span, covering topics all the way from AI technologies in everyday life to single-purpose robots throughout home and work life, and from the mainstreaming of human-machine interfaces to the latest advances in AI, such as the ability to mimic (and improve on) many aspects of human brain function.

    A unique integration of social science on the one hand and new technologies of artificial intelligence on the other, this Handbook offers readers new ways of understanding the rise of AI and its associated global transformations. Written in a clear and direct style, the Handbook  will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience.

    Part I: Social Science Approaches to Artificial Intelligence

    1. The Complex Systems of AI: Recent Trajectories of Social Theory
    Anthony Elliott

    2. Geographies of AI

    Thomas Birtchnell

    3. Artificial Intelligence and Psychology

    J. Michael Innes and Ben W. Morrison

    4. AI in the Age of Technoscience: On the Rise of Data-Driven AI and its Epistem-Ontological Foundations

    Jutta Weber and Bianca Prietl

    5. Work, Employment and Unemployment After AI

    Ross Boyd

    6. Affects After AI: Sociological Perspectives on Artificial Companionship

    Michaela Pfadenhauer and Tobias Lehmann

    7. Anthropology, AI and Robotics

    Joffrey Becker

    8. Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

    Vincent C. Müller

    9. Human-Machine Interaction and Design Methods

    Naoko Abe

    Part II: Fields of Artificial Intelligence in Social Science Research

    10. Management and Organisation in the Age of AI

    Roman Batko

    11. Ambivalent Places of Politics: The Social Construction of Certainties in Automated Mobilities and Artificial Intelligence

    Sven Kesselring and Carolin Schönewolf

    12. Smart Environments

    Maja de Neergaard and Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

    13. Models of Law and Regulation for AI

    Nicolas Petit and Jerome De Cooman

    14. Artificial Intelligence and Cyber-security

    Matteo E. Bonfanti, Myriam Dunn Cavelty, and Andreas Wenger

    15. Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems

    Frank Sauer

    16. AI and Worldviews in the Age of Computational Power

    Massimo Durante

    17. Technogenarians: Ageing and Robotic Care

    Eric L. Hsu

    18. Big Data and Data Analytics

    Jo Bates

    19. AI, Culture Industries and Entertainment

    Sam Han

    20. AI, Robotics, Medicine and Health Sciences

    Norina Gasteiger and Elizabeth Broadbent

    21. AI, Smart Borders and Migration

    Louis Everuss

    Biography

    Anthony Elliott is Dean of External Engagement at the University of South Australia, where he is Research Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and Network. He is Super-Global Professor of Sociology (Visiting) at Keio University, Japan; Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK; Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia; and, Senior Member of King’s College, Cambridge. He is the General Editor of the Routledge Key Ideas book series and the author and editor of over 40 books, including most recently The Culture of AI:  Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution  (Routledge, 2019), Reinvention, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2021) and Making Sense of AI: Our Algorithmic World (Polity, 2021).

    "As expected from a handbook with the goal of summarizing current debates, questions are posed and controversies noted more often than answers are offered in this collection of 21 essays. However, surveying so many different angles on artificial intelligence (AI) allows some insight-inducing themes to emerge. AI and machine learning (ML) are everywhere, from a cellphone's virtual assistant to tech support chatbots, including in the machines that decipher handwritten addresses for the US Postal Service. Many AI systems are assisted by small armies of humans who fill in when the software fails. Such technology remains invisible to most people yet shapes their understandings of the world and themselves. People think and categorize, work, play, and govern themselves differently because of AI—they adopt algorithmic thinking, see new value in inferential reasoning because of big data, and treat anthropomorphic robots like persons. Sometimes these changes are obvious or can be articulated, but some seem to influence human experience and expectations of the world itself, as in the debatable but widespread idea that minds are computers, and computers are (so far fairly limited) minds. Many will use this book, though specialists are likely to be most interested. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. General readers."

    Matthew J. Moore, Professor of Political Science, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA