Artificial Intelligence and the Social Scientist: The Mediation of AIfied Creative Sites

Abstract

This article examines the mediating role of social scientists in the cultural integration and regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on the creative industries. Drawing on an ethnographic case study within a film cooperative, it identifies four modalities through which social scientists become enrolled in AI-related organizational processes: as middlemen linking theory and practice, as distributors facilitating the flow of agency, as coordinators bridging innovation and appropriation, and as hosts observing the reproduction of technical skills. Situated at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Media Studies, the article rethinks mediation not as passive translation, but as an active montage of fragmented meanings, practices, and actors. It argues that AI is not merely an object of study but a distributed assemblage whose significance emerges through situated associations. By articulating how social scientists engage with AI through organizational consultation, cultural programming, and collaborative experimentation, this paper reframes the sociology of AI as a field of strategic, reflexive, and creative intervention. In doing so, it highlights the importance of problematizing mediation as a relational practice that connects cultural actors, technologies, and institutions in the evolving ordering of artificial intelligence.