The Material Condition: A Practice Theory-Oriented Infrastructural Turn to the Ethics of Human-AI Communication

Authors

Anne Mollen, University of Münster, GermanyFollow
Sigrid Kannengießer, University of Münster, GermanyFollow

Abstract

This paper calls for an infrastructural turn in human–AI communication, centered on the materiality of generative AI. We argue that a nuanced understanding of ethical implications of generative AI necessitates examining the socio-technical infrastructures that constitute these systems. These infrastructures encompass not only technological artifacts but also human actors (developers, users, data subjects, etc.) and their practices as well as social contexts in designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining AI. Therefore, we propose to adopt a practice theory approach, to analyze how ethical concerns materialize within these infrastructures. This perspective reveals how infrastructures are contested spaces in global production chains, highlighting the contingency of ethical concerns within human-AI communication and providing a basis for imagining alternative futures for and with generative AI.

DOI

10.30658/hmc.12.3

Author ORCID Identifier

Anne Mollen: 0009-0002-2100-1750

Sigrid Kannengießer: 0000-0002-2342-9868

Recommended Citation

Mollen, A., & Kannengießer, S. (2026). The material condition: A practice theory-oriented infrastructural turn to the ethics of human–AI communication. Human–Machine Communication, 12, 43–60. https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.12.3