The Discourse of Generative AI in a Comparative Perspective

With Professor Reiner Grundmann (University of Nottingham).

Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is an emerging technology and has become a governance object. Following a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis it is argued that the technology has to be understood as a product of a discourse. In this view there is not a technology which develops more or less autonomously, and then a discourse about it. The technology is constituted by discourses, and its stability as a technical object cannot be taken for granted. Its ‘nature’, ‘meaning’, or ‘definition’ is changing over time and across political and geographical spaces.

Combining insights from STS and discourse analysis Professor Reiner Grundmann will put forward a framework for understanding the development of GenAI, combining theoretical work with empirical research. He will present some initial findings, using news coverage and legal frameworks in the UK, the US, and Germany.

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