Oldenburg, Ninell & Papyshev, Gleb: The Stories We Govern By: AI, Risk, and the Power of Imaginaries

_Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society_ 6 (2):1939-1950. 2025This paper examines how competing sociotechnical imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) risk shape governance decisions and regulatory constraints. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies, we analyse three dominant narrative groups: existential risk proponents, who emphasise catastrophic AGI scenarios; accelerationists, who portray AI as a transformative force to be unleashed; and critic