“A Train We Can’t Miss” for Economic Recovery

The Sociotechnical Imaginary of Artificial Intelligence in the Walloon Region

Abstract

The Walloon Region adopted its own AI strategy in 2019, called DigitalWallonia.4ai. This paper analyses it and explores the coproduction (Jasanoff, 2004) of AI adoption and of Wallonia’s future by means of Jasanoff and Kim’s (2009) concept of sociotechnical imaginary. Given its industrial history, the Walloon Region is an interesting case to analyse the interplay of cultural traits, artefacts, and imaginaries, which has been scarcely explored in the interpretive literature on AI. Studying this Region also contributes to the broadening of the scope of research on sociotechnical imaginaries. A document analysis was conducted, along with interviews of prominent AI promoters. The data were interpreted through discourse analysis, and tropes were used as heuristics to reconstruct the desirable future at the heart of the imaginary. The results show that the latter is entrepreneurial and deeply embedded (Jasanoff, 2015b) with the Region’s economic history and connected with transnational, continental, and national imaginaries.