Perplexity Logs: On Routinized Certainty Work and Social Consequences of Seeking Advice from an Artificial Intelligence
Abstract
A neo-structural approach to social phenomena can contribute to the current discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) and the social changes that it brings to society. Using the notion of appropriateness judgement, we examine the difference between online advice seeking from an AI and advice seeking among colleagues at the workplace, the latter defined by its own structural and cultural constraints on interactional and relational activity. Based on the difference between these ways of seeking advice, we coin ‘perplexity log’ to be the record of all queries an AI receives from any person/citizen and look at how these logs are likely to be used for epistemic domination in society. We then use the notion of multilevel recursive synchronization of individual behaviour and collective agency to speculate about the strengths and weaknesses of algorithmic regulation.