2024/12/20 by Adam Davies, Elisa Nguyen, Davies, Adam +7
Decision Sciences · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Evaluation and Performance Assessment #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.16355
openalex publication_date 2024/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
With the rise of foundation models, there is growing concern about their potential social impacts. Social science has a long history of studying the social impacts of transformative technologies in terms of pre-existing systems of power and how these systems are disrupted or reinforced by new technologies. In this position paper, we build on prior work studying the social impacts of earlier technologies to propose a conceptual framework studying foundation models as sociotechnical systems, incorporating social science expertise to better understand how these models affect systems of power, anticipate the impacts of deploying these models in various applications, and study the effectiveness of technical interventions intended to mitigate social harms. We advocate for an interdisciplinary and collaborative research paradigm between AI and social science across all stages of foundation model research and development to promote socially responsible research practices and use cases, and outline several strategies to facilitate such research.