Who’s driving the AI hype in its formative phase? A longitudinal analysis of stakeholders in the US and German AI discourse on Twitter 2012–2021 - AI & SOCIETY

AI has become an ambiguous yet powerful term that routinely refers to different technological advances, with stakeholders competing for public attention to influence public perceptions and decision-makers. Whilst research has focussed on specific AI stakeholders and identified industry dominance in debates around AI, a detailed investigation of the role of different AI stakeholders within public discourses in the formative phase of AI development in the 2010s is missing. This paper proposes a multi-dimension typology for analysing AI stakeholders across different types and different levels. This AI stakeholder typology is exemplified by comparing stakeholders longitudinally in the AI Twitter discourse across the US and Germany from 2012 until 2021. This early period of budding AI hype delineated country-specific trajectories and specific political and economic framings that continue to influence the current discourse and regulation of GenAI within these two countries. The results highlight the institutionalisation of stakeholders in the German discourse, whilst the US dataset reveals strong shifts in stakeholder types and levels. Overall, the analysis offers insights into different cycles of institutionalisation in the early AI discourse on Twitter. It also highlights clear shifts in stakeholder involvement at different stages of public AI discourse in its formative phase in different socio-cultural and geographical contexts.