FOR 5656:  Communicative AI: The Automation of Societal Communication

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516511468

The prevalence of speech assistants taking orders, social bots influencing debates, and machines generating texts underscores the increasing sophistication of automated communication. Simultaneously, public discourse on these phenomena reflects the ongoing challenges associated with the automation of communication. It seems that the intricacies of today’s complex societies compel a reliance on automation to meet communication needs, while also generating additional issues for which automated communication appears to be the most plausible solution. We refer to the general phenomena of today’s automated communication systems as communicative AI. Despite the diversity among the examples mentioned above, they share characteristics that warrant comprehensive investigation: Communicative AI is (1) based on various technologically advanced forms of automation for the purpose of communication, (2) embedded within digital infrastructures, and (3) closely entangled with human practices. The thesis of our proposed Research Unit is that the emergence of communicative AI signifies a gradual but profound transformation of our media environment, carrying significant consequences, risks but also opportunities for societal communication. For this reason, we pose the question: How will societal communication change when communicative AI becomes a part of it? The Research Unit aims to investigate this question by looking at the socio-material constitution of communicative AI and its appropriation in various social domains. We also investigate the societal discourse on communicative AI, monitor the spread of its technologies and explore possible future scenarios. Regarding its socio-material constitution, we delve into the pioneers’ imaginaries of communicative AI, its implementation in the form of interfaces, digital infrastructures and sustainability, the juridification of communicative AI and its governance by corporations. In our research on social domains, we explore the appropriation of communicative AI and related challenges, encompassing its impact on journalistic autonomy, the redefinition of deliberation in public discourse, the reconfiguration of the personal sphere by non-human companions, the transformation of healthcare through communicative AI, and how learning and teaching are renegotiated when communicative AI is deployed in education. To explore this, we conceptualize communicative AI as part of hybrid figurations, giving rise to entirely new forms of supra-individual agency in the convergence of humans and machines.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Hepp, Andreas )
• Education: ComAI for learning and teaching (Applicant Breiter, Andreas )
• Governance: Private ordering of ComAI through corporate communication and policies (Applicant Katzenbach, Christian )
• Interfaces: Implementing user-centered ComAI (Applicant Malaka, Rainer )
• Journalism: Automating the news and journalistic autonomy (Applicant Loosen, Wiebke )
• Law: The Juridification of ComAI (Applicant Schulz, Wolfgang )
• Pioneer Communities: Imagining ComAI and its possible futures (Applicant Hepp, Andreas )
• Political discourse: ComAI and deliberative quality (Applicants Puschmann, Cornelius ;  Wiedemann, Gregor )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Andreas Hepp