Malmö University Publications
Operational message
There are currently operational disruptions. Troubleshooting is in progress.
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Choreographing Digital Futures: ChatGPT and the Ethnography of Human-AI Speculation
Malmö University, Faculty of Technology and Society (TS), Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT). (DWF)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7628-5829
2025 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This paper explores how digital futures take shape in and through interactions with generative AI, focusing on ChatGPT as an active collaborator in speculative ethnographic research. Moving beyond the framing of AI as either a tool or a disruptor, I argue that ChatGPT — and similar technologies — should be understood as agents within evolving socio-technical fields, co-creating the very futures we seek to imagine. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from a "work futures" workshop — where twelve participants collaboratively envisioned and staged speculative workplaces set in 2050 at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University — as well as intensive co-authoring engagements with ChatGPT, I examine how AI contributes to shaping these imaginaries. Rather than simply answering questions, ChatGPT dynamically influenced discussions, storylines, and decision-making processes. To conceptualise these interactions, I introduce conversational choreography — an approach that attends to the iterative, performative exchanges between humans and AI. Through these exchanges, meanings, roles, and speculative possibilities take shape. By analysing these choreographies, I argue that AI is not external to the social worlds we study but actively involved in configuring future imaginaries, roles, and relations. In doing so, this paper contributes to current debates on how to study sociodigital intra-actions and emergent futures, offering conversational choreography as a methodological tool for ethnographically engaging with AI in participatory and speculative settings. Ultimately, I reflect on what it means to engage AI not only as a research subject but as a collaborator in imagining and performing possible futures.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025.
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology) Science and Technology Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-79608OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-79608DiVA, id: diva2:1999551
Conference
THE RC33 ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGY, Naples, Italy, 22-25 September
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2023-00676Swedish Research Council, 2020-00977Available from: 2025-09-20 Created: 2025-09-20 Last updated: 2025-10-14Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Abstract

Authority records

Berg, Martin

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Berg, Martin
By organisation
Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT)
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)Science and Technology Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 101 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf