National Tech Rhetoric in a Global AI Race. Smart Futures, Public Goods and Fierce Geopolitics

How to integrate AI technologies in the functioning and structures of our society has become a concern of contemporary politics and public debates. The dissertation investigates civil and military national AI strivings as a particular form of co-shaping this development, a hybrid of policy and discourse that offers imaginaries, allocates resources, and sets rules. Current research focuses on industry, academic, or public debates in the discursive construction of AI.
Certainly, governments are impacted by public and private narratives, but, in turn, they are themselves powerful players in shaping our perception and expectation of AI. The papers of this dissertation analyze governmental positioning on AI and its role in future imaginary production, which not only includes categories of economic prosperity but similarly public good narratives, geopolitical security strivings and tensions between fact and fiction. With governments proclaiming an international AI race, they endow their imaginary pathways with massive resources and investments and contribute to co-producing the installment of these futures. Conceptually the thesis is informed by sociotechnical imaginaries, debates in technology assessment, trust, international relations, the sociology of expectations, and further, literature about the technological sublime and myths. ... mehrI qualitatively analyze and compare civil (AI strategy papers) and military (position papers on Autonomous Weapon Systems) policy documents of leading AI nations of the US, China, France and Germany (selectively) towards their imaginary production of social, economic, normative and geopolitical strivings. The results of the case studies point to a reassessment of the theoretical premises of anticipating futures. It is only inadequately encircled with concepts like “vision”, “prediction”, “imaginary”, or “forecast”. A deeper understanding of future capture through hype is necessary. Conclusively, the dissertation argues that hype is a neglected concept in the study of anticipatory practices at the intersections of innovation, policy and society.