More-than-Human Mediation

Social Scientists in the Making of Environmental AI Systems

Bibliographic Data

ID11261337
AuthorsMyung‐Ae Choi (0000-0003-2993-2648, Yonsei University), Byung-Sun Park (0000-0001-8263-5744, Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-12-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01622439251393756
OpenAlexW4416932109
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited37

What can social scientists contribute to the development of AI? To date, their efforts have primarily been viewed through the lens of AI's social consequences, such as offering legal and ethical guidelines and providing observation-based critiques. However, there is a growing demand for broader engagement of social scientists in AI research itself. Based on the experience of organizing and participating in two environmental AI projects, this paper aims to illuminate the unique challenges and opportunities for social scientists working with , rather than just for , engineers. Building on literature from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and anthropology on research collaboration, it shows that social scientists can take the role as mediators of AI development in three key ways: (1) connecting human and nonhuman actors across multiple disciplines and sources; (2) negotiating challenges posed by disciplinary differences and human-nonhuman distinctions; and (3) modulating the power dynamics between engineers and things in data production and interpretation. By doing so, this paper argues, social scientists can uncover the “more-than-human” dimension of AI development

Dimension (graph theory · Discipline · Key (lock · Negotiation · Power (physics · Social change · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Race, Genetics, and Society

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Open DOIOpen Access