Managing Ambiguities at the Edge of Knowledge: Research Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Labs in an Era of Academic Capitalism

Managing Ambiguities at the Edge of Knowledge: Research Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Labs in an Era of Academic Capitalism

Many research-intensive universities have moved into the business of promoting technology development that promises revenue, impact, and legitimacy. While the scholarship on academic capitalism has documented the general dynamics of this institutional shift, we know less about the ground-level chall...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science, technology, & human values Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 703 - 740
Main Author: Hoffman, Steve G.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publishing 01-07-2017
SAGE Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Artificial intelligence
Business
Capitalism
Commercialization
Decision analysis
Decision making
Dynamics
Expert systems
Funding
Legitimacy
Nostalgia
Organizational research
Science and technology
Technology
University research
Yield
ambiguity
epistemology
decision-making
scientific problem choice
technology design
university–industry relations
academic capitalism
artificial intelligence
ontology
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Many research-intensive universities have moved into the business of promoting technology development that promises revenue, impact, and legitimacy. While the scholarship on academic capitalism has documented the general dynamics of this institutional shift, we know less about the ground-level challenges of research priority and scientific problem choice. This paper unites the practice tradition in science and technology studies with an organizational analysis of decision-making to compare how two university artificial intelligence labs manage ambiguities at the edge of scientific knowledge. One lab focuses on garnering funding through commercialization schemes, while the other is oriented to federal science agencies. The ethnographic comparison identifies the mechanisms through which an industry-oriented lab can be highly adventurous yet produce a research program that is thin and erratic due to a priority placed on commercialization. However, the comparison does not yield an implicit nostalgia for federalized science; it reveals the mechanisms through which agency-oriented labs can pursue a thick and consistent research portfolio but in a strikingly myopic fashion.
ISSN:0162-2439
1552-8251
DOI:10.1177/0162243916687038