THE CONSTRUCTION OF WORK IN ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE

Although technology is often viewed as value-free, an anthropological perspective suggests that technological tools embody values and assump tions of their builders. Drawing upon extended field research, this ar ticle investigates the construction of work in the expert systems comm unity of artificial intelligence (AI). Describing systematic deletions in practitioners' representations of their own work the article relat es these to both the selectivity of conventional knowledge acquisition procedures and the tendency of expert systems to (in the practitioner s' words) ''fall off the knowledge cliff.'' Although system builders s ee the latter problem as purely technical, this article suggests that it is also the result of nontechnical factors, including the system bu ilders' own tacit assumptions. This article supports the view that tec hnology has a cultural dimension.