清新国际讲堂
2024秋季学期·第3期（总第108期）
TSJC Global Classroom
GBJ Lecture Series · 2024 Fall
John Downey
Associate Pro Vice Chancellor, Climate Change and Net Zero
Professor of Comparative Media Analysis, Loughborough University
Member of Academia Europaea
Mapping the sociotechnical imaginaries of generative AI in US, UK, Chinese, and Indian newspapers
John Downey read Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University. He was a Senior Scholar at Gonville and Caius College and was the Graythorne Scholar and Beaumont Scholar at Jesus College. His PhD was about the Frankfurt School and John was a post-doc at the Graduate College for Communication Sciences at Siegen University in Germany. His work remains influenced by the rich and continuing tradition of the Frankfurt School that brings together social philosophy, economics, and cultural analysis. In 2022 John was elected to be a member of the Academia Europaea in recognition of the 'sustained academic excellence' of his research.
Lecture Introduction
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked a widespread public discourse, oscillating between utopian and dystopian visions about a technologically determined near future. In this paper, we employ the concept of AI imaginary to examine the diverse and contested visions of the supposed impact of generative AI on society. Utilising Cave and Dihal's conceptual framework, we develop a quantitative methodology to map the utopian and dystopian narratives of generative AI. Analysing newspapers from the UK, USA, China, and India, we uncover significant differences in media representations through content analysis and computational topic modelling. Findings reveal a dystopian perspective in the UK and USA, focusing on challenges such as workforce displacement and misinformation, whereas in China and India, the narrative is more utopian, highlighting potential benefits for technological leadership, economic growth, and social advancement. Our study provides methodological and conceptual tools for a comparative examination of the sociotechnical imaginaries of generative AI.
1
Time
Wednesday, November 20
3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m., Beijing Time
2
Venue
Future Media Lab, Tsinghua University
Global Business Journalism students,
alumni and friends are invited to participate.
