5: Prototypes, Passing and Programming: Interaction With Machines

In recent years the ‘pivot to voice’ (Housley, 2021) has been enhanced through the arrival of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that displays automated and stochastic ‘interactional’ capacities across a number of modalities that include text, image, video and voice. In some important respects, this represents a significant development that moves beyond Web 2.0 technologies and their associated data generative and networked affordances, epitomised by first-generation social media, and towards the mundane socio-technical reality of programmable agents that draw and work across existing socio-technical systems in ways that will generate both anticipated and unanticipated social implications. An example of this type of anticipated cross-cutting digital assemblage would include the use of Large Language Model (LLM) platforms via networked mobile telephony while designing and then promoting agentic and dynamic content for the next generation of social media. The following sections will explore the current rise of generative AI through three interconnected lenses: namely prototypes, passing and programming.