The Stories We Govern By: AI, Risk, and the Power of Imaginaries

2025-08-15

AI Summary

This study examines how divergent sociotechnical imaginaries shape perceptions of AI risks and, consequently, influence governance decisions and regulatory pathways. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) theory, it employs narrative analysis to conduct a cross-dimensional comparison of three representative manifestos: those of risk proponents, accelerationists, and critical AI scholars—revealing fundamental disagreements regarding human agency, technological ontology, present socio-technical conditions, and future visions. The analysis advances the core thesis that “imagination is governance,” demonstrating how dominant risk narratives implicitly encode normative assumptions that constrain policy space. It critiques speculative dogmatism and advocates for a practice-anchored, value-pluralist governance paradigm. The findings offer a novel analytical framework for diagnosing ideological tensions within AI governance and advance a shift toward regulation grounded in empirical reality and democratic legitimacy.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Multiagent Systems: Agent/AI Theories and Architectures

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

This paper examines how competing sociotechnical imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) risk shape governance decisions and regulatory constraints. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies, we analyse three dominant narrative groups: existential risk proponents, who emphasise catastrophic AGI scenarios; accelerationists, who portray AI as a transformative force to be unleashed; and critical AI scholars, who foreground present-day harms rooted in systemic inequality. Through an analysis of representative manifesto-style texts, we explore how these imaginaries differ across four dimensions: normative visions of the future, diagnoses of the present social order, views on science and technology, and perceived human agency in managing AI risks. Our findings reveal how these narratives embed distinct assumptions about risk and have the potential to progress into policy-making processes by narrowing the space for alternative governance approaches. We argue against speculative dogmatism and for moving beyond deterministic imaginaries toward regulatory strategies that are grounded in pragmatism.

Problem

• Examining competing AI risk imaginaries shaping governance decisions
• Analyzing three dominant narratives' impact on regulatory constraints
• Exploring how narratives embed assumptions narrowing governance alternatives

Innovation

• Analyzing sociotechnical imaginaries of AI risk
• Comparing three dominant narrative groups' perspectives
• Advocating pragmatic regulatory strategies over determinism