Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are more and more integrated into everyday lives, both scholarly and popular discourses on AI’s often revolve around charting the various risks that may be associated with them. The manner and magnitude of risk that various researchers identify and foresee varies; however, what is common between them is, undoubtedly, the concept of risk itself. This concept, we argue, has been largely taken for granted by the fields involved in the research on AI’s; in other words, “risk” has been employed with an everyday sensibility without due critical examination. In this paper, we address risk as a concept directly, by examining interdisciplinary theories and literatures on risk to discuss examples of AI technologies. Through this work, we aim to begin a critical discussion of the importance of theorising risk within design research and practice, and within the development of emerging technologies.