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

TL;DR

This paper explores how different societal narratives about AI risk influence governance and policy, emphasizing the importance of pragmatic approaches over speculative or deterministic imaginaries.

Contribution

It analyzes three dominant AI risk narratives and their impact on governance, advocating for pragmatic regulation beyond dogmatic imaginaries.

Findings

Narratives differ across four key dimensions: visions, diagnoses, views on science, and human agency.

These imaginaries influence policy-making by narrowing governance options.

Moving beyond deterministic imaginaries can foster more pragmatic AI regulation.

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.