The project examines the EU’s efforts to create a trans-European, innovation-friendly environment through science, technology, and innovation policies that provide a model for responsible socio-technical development strategies in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). An interdisciplinary framework, which borrows concepts and insights from European integration theories as well as from work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), is developed to explore the impact of actors’ norms and values, identities, and material interests on the EU’s AI-related policies. While mainstream perspectives perceive the European politics of STI as the result of rational actors’ attempts to maximize material interests, this project puts equal emphasis on the normative and ideational aspects as well as the reciprocal impact of technological artifacts themselves on the formulation and implementation of EU-policies. Simultaneously, the project highlights the messiness of technological innovation as well as its deep embeddedness within the European integration process. The EU’s recent struggles to formulate and implement ambitious AI-related STI-policies effectively highlight the complexity and multidimensionality of technological innovation.

Dr. Stefan Fritsch
Associate Professor of International Relations
Department of Political Science
Bowling Green State University
Web: https://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/political-science/faculty-and-sta...