Fibreglass and steel: De-imagineering AI value claims for Danish SMEs

Abstract

‘Artificial intelligence (AI) creates value’ is a phrase that circulates through Danish policy documents and consultancy reports, across conference stages and appears in opinion pieces and political speeches. Through ethnographic fieldwork with small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and AI experts involved in AI pilot projects, as well as observations at AI promotional events, we trace how SMEs are enrolled in AI adoption as vehicles for accessing this value on a national level. Drawing on anthropological theories of value, we show that there are in fact multiple meanings of value in operation: value for society, value as revenue, value as cost-saving. We build on the concept of imagineering to describe the affective process by which promotional actors semantically transmute these forms of value, thereby enabling a neoliberal stabilisation of ‘societal value’ as a reduction in public-sector employment. Therefore, we propose the concept of de-imagineering as an analytic that helps us unblur the semantic slippage of what AI might, can and will do, and, not least, for whom it will do those things. As an analytic device, we argue that de-imagineering enables us to challenge deterministic narratives of the value accruing from technology more broadly, and thus shift the focal plane towards those who stand to benefit from this affective promotion.