What makes Artificial Intelligence controversial—and why does this matter? And what roles do such controversies play for society and democracy? The new special issue on AI controversies takes up these questions from multiple disciplinary angles. It was co-edited by Anna Jobin (Human-IST, University of Fribourg), Noortje Marres (University of Warwick), Christian Katzenbach (University of Bremen / HIIG), and Anders Kristian Munk (Technical University of Denmark).

The editors' introduction "On the controversiality of AI: The controversy is not the situation", sets the stage for a rethinking of AI’s public life—not as a technoscientific process of democratization, but rather limiting the space for participation. The editors call for a broader perspective on AI controversies, one that connects them to the social frictions and political tensions they both mirror and produce.

This special issue is the result of an international collaboration that brings together perspectives from social sciences, design research, media studies, and STS. It features contributions by an international set of authors, each highlighting different forms and moments of AI controversy:

• On the controversiality of AI: The controversy is not the situation (introduction)
  by Noortje Marres, Christian Katzenbach, Anders Kristian Munk and Anna Jobin
• AI as super-controversy: Eliciting AI and society controversies with an extended expert community in the UK
  by Noortje Marres, Michael Castelle, Beatrice Gobbo, Chiara Poletti and James Tripp

• Reclaiming artificial intelligence accounts: A plea for a participatory turn in artificial intelligence inquiries
  by Pauline Gourlet, Donato Ricci and Maxime Crépel

• Controversies, contradiction, and “participation” in AI
  by Mona Sloane

• Freezing out: Legacy media's shaping of AI as a cold controversy
  by Guillaume Dandurand, Fenwick McKelvey and Jonathan Roberge

• The uncontroversial ‘thingness’ of AI
  by Lucy Suchman

• AI incidents and ‘networked trouble’: The case for a research agenda
  by Tommy Shaffer Shane

• Beyond artificial intelligence controversies: What are algorithms doing in the scientific literature?
  by Anders Kristian Munk, Mathieu Jacomy, Matilde Ficozzi and Torben Elgaard Jensen

• Situating AI policy: Controversies covered and the normalisation of AI
  by Laura Liebig, Anna Jobin, Licinia Güttel and Christian Katzenbach

• Decolonizing AI? Lessons from a failed experiment
  by Martin Tironi and Camila Albornoz