Introduction De-Centring Artificial Intelligence and Rethinking Sustainability

This chapter argues the need to expand media and communication research in two ways. We first indicate the necessity of broadening current media and communication approaches to AI and automation to include analyses of their material underpinnings. We then propose expanding discussions of AI to examine it as an analytical phenomenon along its infrastructures, encompassing the manifold relations that actors have with AI from mineral mining to the AI commodity. Situating AI infrastructures as a key concern for media and communication research will help account for the inequalities, economies and societal conflicts that emerge within AI-saturated futures. In other words, AI must be explored at the intersection of infrastructure and sustainability.