Time sem­in­ar: How So­ci­otem­por­al­it­ies In­form AI Ac­count­ab­il­ity: The Case of Tar­geted Ad­vert­ising

In this talk, based on a paper coauthored for the special issue What is Sociological About AI? (Social Science & Computer Review), I make two arguments. First, I challenge the AI field's preoccupation with technical interpretability. Sociologists have reframed the black-box problem productively, showing that AI systems and their impacts become understandable through their material and social dimensions, including the minerals powering data centres,
the labour sustaining operations, and the organisational relations and policies meant to prevent harm. Second, I extend this by drawing on the sociology of time, a resource largely overlooked in AI research and governance. Drawing on a retrospective empirical study of transparency efforts in targeted advertising, I show how sociotemporalities, the narratives and structures of time embedded through the sociotechnical fabric, help explain how AI systems evolve, and shape how accountability is imagined and enacted. I close by reflecting on how attention to sociotemporalities can inform analyses of emerging AI technologies and open new possibilities for meaningful interventions in AI governance.

Article on which the talk is based:
Hardcastle, F., Henne, K., Harb, J. I., Lee, A., Viana, J. N., & Halford, S. (2026). Unblackboxing how sociotemporalities inform AI accountability: The case of targeted advertising. Social Science Computer Review, 44(1), 131-149.

Bio:
Faranak is a Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU, where she manages the Materials, Systems and Society Hub (MASSH), and explores the social and environmental dimensions of emerging science and technology, with previous work in areas such as AI, energy transition, and personalized medicine. Faranak is particularly interested in how narratives shape relationships between science, technology, society, environment, and policy, and how we can harness storytelling to expand our collective capacity for change. Committed to interdisciplinary education and research, Faranak works across sectors to bring together diverse insights and build collaborative approaches to complex challenges. She is a Visiting Fellow at Centre for Human Genetics (University of Oxford) and Visiting Fellow in Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education at the University of Southampton, UK.