What regimes of truth and power relations underpin Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How is the idea of an autonomous and inevitable AI socially constructed? I propose a research agenda for a Sociology of AI that analyses it as a socio-technical phenomenon, inscribed in networks of human and non-human actors, and not as a neutral or purely technical entity.

What are the myths, metaphors and promises that shape narratives about AI? What economic and political interests promote certain visions of its impact? A critical approach requires deconstructing these rhetorics and questioning who defines the values, norms and objectives of AI and for whose benefit.

How does AI reproduce and amplify structural inequalities? How are its infrastructures, logics and uses inscribed in histories of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and racism? Analysing AI as a relational technology involves mapping these continuities and their asymmetrical effects on different social groups.

Who are the actors - visible, invisibilised or silenced - who participate in the AI ecosystem? How can we include multiple voices and imagine alternative futures for these technologies? I challenge Sociology to articulate with creative tools of fictional writing and the digital visual, exploring innovative methodologies to produce hybrid and situated knowledge about the social worlds of AI.

Bio note 

Helena Machado is an Invited Coordinating Researcher at the ISCTE Knowledge and Innovation Association - Centre for the Valorisation and Transfer of Technologies (CVTT-ISCTE), University Institute of Lisbon; and Full Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho. She currently coordinates the Scientific Council for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of the Foundation for Science and Technology.
Internationally recognised for her research work, she has received two grants from the European Research Council (ERC). Between 2015 and 2021, she led the “Exchange” project (Consolidator Grant), which analysed the social implications of transnational networks based on forensic genetic technologies for crime control in Europe. In 2024, she was awarded an Advanced Grant for the “fAIces” project, which will investigate the implications of facial recognition technologies based on artificial intelligence for privacy, human rights and democracy.
Her research is situated at the intersection of the social studies of science and technology and pragmatic ethics. Focussing on the case of emerging human identification technologies in the fields of forensic genetics and artificial intelligence, it explores the public controversies generated around these technologies, the involvement of the public and the readaptations of scientists and companies to ethical and social challenges.