New on SSRN: Five Essays Exploring AI, Society, and Governance by Gregory Rice

Over the past year, I have been developing a research program at the intersection of social theory and artificial intelligence. These five working papers, now available on SSRN, examine AI not as an autonomous force, but as something fundamentally shaped by human decisions, institutions, and social feedback loops.

Drawing from Anthony Giddens’ Structuration Theory, this work offers a framework for understanding AI systems as co-participants in complex, recursive human–machine environments. Each paper engages a different dimension of that challenge:

A Structuration-based model of AI agency — exploring how forms of “machine agency” emerge through design and interaction rather than independent intention.

A genealogy of projection and alienation in AI — tracing how human assumptions become hypostatized into systems that appear autonomous.

Divergent futures for open societies — examining the political pathways created when AI influences public reasoning and democratic structures.

A micro-level account of AI selfhood — describing how identity-like properties in AI arise through continuous relational feedback.

Institutional reification and democratic risk — analyzing how automated decision systems may harden power structures and narrow public autonomy.

Together, these essays aim to contribute to emerging conversations on responsible AI governance, not by treating AI as an existential “other,” but by recognizing it as a deeply social artifact. Readers interested in critical theory, governance design, or the future of human-machine coordination may find helpful new angles here.

You can read the full papers on SSRN: SSRN author page