Funded by OTKA (NKFI) (December 2019 – June 2024).
Title of our research: Visions of the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Society.
As social scientists, we consider it important to examine visions of the future and their effects that are already discernible in the present. A key aim of this research is also to explore in greater depth the connections between action orientation and expectations concerning the future. We further consider it essential to examine how these expectations — by excluding certain possibilities and foreclosing particular paths — shape both the future and the present. To achieve our aims, we chose, on the one hand, the traditional method of the sociological interview, and, on the other, techniques developed in the field of transition research for “managing” the future, which can be used to construct different scenarios of the future. These methods proved the most effective for capturing and analysing, from a sociological perspective, the narratives of fictional expectations projected onto the future. Our aim, through the application of these methods, is to identify scenarios and to analyse the very process of scenario-building from a sociological point of view. The different methodological techniques and sub-areas of the research are linked by the contexts of the expectations and anticipations painted in envisioned future visions — the so-called fictional expectations. Ideas about artificial intelligence and the future of work are present at many levels of society, since this is a widely used technology today; we therefore consider it especially important to conduct a sociological examination of visions relating to artificial intelligence. Our study focuses on developments related to artificial intelligence up to 2050 and on the labour market.