The Construction of Work in Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Although technology is often viewed as value-free, an anthropological perspective suggests that technological tools embody values and assumptions of their builders. Drawing upon extended field research, this article investigates the construction of work in the expert systems community of artificial intelligence (AI). Describing systematic deletions in practitioners' representations of their own work, the article relates these to both the selectivity of conventional knowledge acquisition procedures and the tendency of expert systems to (in the practitioners' words) "fall off the knowledge cliff." Although system builders see the latter problem as purely technical, this article suggests that it is also the result of nontechnical factors, including the system builders' own tacit assump tions. This article supports the view that technology has a cultural dimension.