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Research on AI: Sociology

This guide is designed to help students find scholarly research about the impact of AI across different disciplines, including sociology, psychology, education, economics, healthcare, and ecology.

Impact of AI on Sociology

Starting Your Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a significant talking point in sociology today because of its impact on social structures, relationships, and inequalities. Sociologists are concerned with AI's racial, gender, and class biases, as well as its potential to reinforce existing inequities by benefiting privileged groups. In addition, AI-generated content is blurring the lines between truth, authorship, and authenticity. In summary, although AI technology can help with their research, sociologists are concerned about how AI will shape culture and society.

In this guide, you will find...

  • Articles to get you started in your research
  • "Hot topics" to help you choose a research topic
  • A pre-designed search in the library databases
  • Keywords to help you design your personalized search string
  • A link to the library's new AI research assistant
  • Links to some of the library's specialized databases

   Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

Internet Resources

Many reliable sociological publications and scholarly journals regarding AI and the field of sociology can be found for free on the internet. A few are listed here:

Hot Topics & Keywords

Hot Topics

  • Social inequality & bias
  • Algorithmic echo chambers
  • Digital colonialism
  • Impact of AI on cultural capital
  • Algorithmic gatekeeping
  • Impact on the arts & human creativity

Keywords

("Artificial intelligence" OR AI) AND

  • Sociolog*
  • "Social interaction"
  • "Critical theory"
  • Power
  • Bias
  • "Technological determinism"
  • "Social stratification"
  • Class
  • "Social dynamic"
  • "Digital colonialism"
  • "Cultural capital"

AI Facial Recognition Bias

Examining biases in LAION-5B, Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL), and our SDXL-Inc. Comparing gender and race distributions in LAION-5B, LAION-5B with only person labels, SDXL, and our SDXL-Inc based on a sample of 88,714 images from the LAION-5B dataset, 10,000 images generated by SDXL, and 10,000 generated by SDXL-Inc. For the latter 20,000 images, we used the prompt: “a photo of a person”.

Taken from AlDahoul, N., Rahwan, T. & Zaki, Y. (2025). AI-Generated Faces Influence Gender Stereotypes and Racial Homogenization.

Databases

Brand Resources - ExLibris Primo Logo

Below, find a pre-designed search on the impact of AI on the field of sociology in the library's database discovery service, Primo:

Check out these library databases for more scholarly articles and resources on AI and sociology:

Primo Research Assistant

This guide will help you learn to navigate the library's new AI assistant, the Primo Research Assistant:

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