How AI is imagined by industry during the Sam Altman controversy

The aim of this research is to identify AI imaginaries, the issues they raise, and how the AI industry tackles them. It does so by choosing an opportune moment to map the issue space by virtue of a controversy around the firing and rehiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The sites for the mapping are X/Twitter and LinkedIn, where users frantically post not only about Altman but also about all manner of AI promises and pitfalls. By employing techniques from controversy mapping and digital research methods, we locate contemporary AI imaginaries, assess their salience in a cross-platform perspective, and describe the stakes gleaned from the prominence of certain dominant imaginaries, such as longtermism, regulatory ambivalence, and techno-hagiography. We discuss the issues these imaginaries raise and the AI industry’s premediation and preclusion of them: the manners by which the AI industry strives to occupy the future and absorb the present.