ABSTRACT
A neo-structural approach to social phenomena can contribute to the current discussion of artificial intelligence and the social changes that it brings to society. Using the notions of appropriateness judgement and certainty work, we examine –using multiplexity analyses– the difference between online advice-seeking from an AI and advice-seeking in a collegial workplace defined by its own structural and cultural constraints on interactional and relational activity. Based on the difference between these ways of seeking advice and performing certainty work, we coin ‘perplexity log’ the record of all queries an AI receives from any person/citizen and look at how these logs are likely to be used for bureaucratized and routinized epistemic domination and algorithmic regulation in society. We then use the notion of multilevel recursive synchronization of individual behaviour and collective agency to speculate about the strengths and weaknesses of the forthcoming algorithmic regulation that the use of artificial intelligence applied by big relational data introduces into society.
