Axes for Sociotechnical Inquiry in AI Research

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has far exceeded the investigation their relationship with society. Sociotechnical inquiry is needed to mitigate harms new whose potential impacts remain poorly understood. To date, subfields AI research develop primarily individual views on sociotechnics, while tools for external investigation, comparison, and cross-pollination are lacking. In this paper, we propose four directions into evolving areas technological development: value--what progress direction does a field promote, optimization--how defined system within problem formulation relates broader dynamics, consensus--how agreement achieved who included in building it, failure--what methods pursued when specification found wanting. paper provides lexicon sociotechnical illustrates it through example consumer drone technology.