A Sociological Eye on AI. Key Concepts, Analytical Dimensions, and Methodological Tensions

Between 2024 and 2026, a variety of position papers and special issues in the field ofsocial sciences have started addressing the social, epistemological, and cultural impactof generative AI. Such emerging literature looks vast, heterogeneous, fragmented, andexpectably still at a pre-paradigmatic stage. Without the ambition of addressing such afast-growing body of work in a fully systematic way, this paper reviews a significant varietyof recent publications to identify major trends and some common ground aimed atbridge-building among different intra-disciplinary research strands, while remaining opento inter-disciplinary dialogue. It proposes a framework based on a few key concepts (AIas agency, communication, and memory), analytical dimensions (AI as object, practice,and method), and methodological tensions (macro-micro, quanti-quali, distant-close).In doing so, it contributes to the ongoing construction of a shared toolkit to investigatehow various social and cultural domains have been affected by the recent developmentand increasing adoption of generative AI.