On the controversiality of AI: The controversy is not the situation

Do public controversies about AI matter? Can they really make a difference to how AI is taken up or imposed on society? This introduction to the Special Issue on Analysing Articifial Intelligence Controversies (?) discusses how the contributing articles and commentaries address this question through original research and critical reflection. We argue that AI presents a watershed moment for the analysis of public controversies about science and technology insofar as AI controversies today often serve as occasions for the demonstration of techno-scientific authority and the reassertion of hierarchies between expert and lay, which challenges the framing of controversy as a force of democratisation in Science & Technology Studies. We discuss how this technopolitical context compels us to investigate anew the relations between AI controversies and the situations—the underlying tensions, disputes and frictions in society—to which these controversies are relevant, or alleged to be relevant. We identify four different modalities in which AI controversies operate on social and political situations: (1) The controversy conceals the situation. (2) The controversy articulates the situation. (3) The situation articulates the controversy. (4) The controversy and the situation are mutually irrelevant. We draw on the contributions to the Special Theme to develop a typology of these four modalities and discuss how these contributions themselves address the wider challenge of controversy as a force of “authoritanization” by reworking the concepts and methods of Controversy Analysis and by critically investigating, evaluating and reflecting on AI controversies of the last 10 years.