Artificial Intelligence and Communication: A Human–Machine Communication Research Agenda

Author ORCID Identifier

Andrea Guzman:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6874-9435

Publication Title

New Media and Society

ISSN

14614448

E-ISSN

14617315

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) and people’s interactions with it—through virtual agents, socialbots, and language-generation software—do not fit neatly into paradigms of communication theory that have long focused on human–human communication. To address this disconnect between communication theory and emerging technology, this article provides a starting point for articulating the differences between communicative AI and previous technologies and introduces a theoretical basis for navigating these conditions in the form of scholarship within human–machine communication (HMC). Drawing on an HMC framework, we outline a research agenda built around three key aspects of communicative AI technologies: (1) the functional dimensions through which people make sense of these devices and applications as communicators, (2) the relational dynamics through which people associate with these technologies and, in turn, relate to themselves and others, and (3) the metaphysical implications called up by blurring ontological boundaries surrounding what constitutes human, machine, and communication.

First Page

70

Last Page

86

Publication Date

7-4-2019

DOI

10.1177/1461444819858691

Keywords

Artificial intelligence, communication research, human–computer interaction, human–machine communication, media studies, ontological classification, social configurations

Department

Department of Communication

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