Artificial intelligence and the public arena

The public arena relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to ever greater degrees. Media structures hosting the public arena-such as Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube-increasingly rely on AI-enabled applications to shape information environments, autonomously generate content, and communicate with people. These applications affect the public arena's functions: make society visible to itself and provide spaces for the formation of publics and counterpublics. We offer a framework that allows for the conceptualization and empirical examination of AI's structural impact on the public arena. Based on this perspective, we argue that the growing uses of AI will lead to a strengthening of intermediary structures that can exercise a greater degree of control over the public arena. In addition, the data-driven nature of most AI-applications threatens to push challenges to the political status quo out of sight and obstruct the assessability of AI-enabled interventions.

Automated summary

The increasing reliance on AI-enabled applications in media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube has significant impact on the public arena by shaping information environments, generating content, and facilitating communication. This usage of AI is expected to strengthen intermediary structures and potentially exert greater control over the public arena. Furthermore, the data-driven nature of these applications poses a threat to political challenges and hinders the transparency of AI-enabled interventions.