Rethinking AI From the Mobile End: An Assemblage-Centered Lens

Abstract

This commentary calls for scholarly attention to mobile AI (AI systems embedded in smartphones, apps, and mobility infrastructures) that has been overshadowed by the dominance of PC-based, work- and productivity-focused AI discourse. It argues that such discourse, shaped by technological determinism and U.S.-centrism, limits our understanding of AI’s, especially mobile AI’s, sociotechnical diversity, open-endedness, and deep entanglement with everyday life. To address this gap, the article develops an assemblage-centered lens that foregrounds the contingent and contextual trajectories of AI’s development, application, and social implications. Through three analytical parameters—associated milieu, lock-in, and detachment—and drawing upon the cases of ByteDance’s Doubao and Tencent’s Yuanbao, the article shows how an assemblage-centered lens to mobile AI invites scholars to rethink AI beyond the PC-based, work- and productivity-centered paradigm and to recognize mobile AI's distinctive potential pathways of infrastructuralization in everyday life.

Keywords

mobile AI assemblage contingency contextuality everyday life

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anand

Gupta

Appel

(2018). The promise of infrastructure. Duke University Press.

Avnoon

Oliver

A. L.

(2023). Nothing new under the sun: Medical professional maintenance in the face of artificial intelligence’s disruption. Big Data & Society, 10(2), 20539517231210269. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231210269

Bijker

W. E.

(1995). Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change. The MIT Press.

Callon

(2021). Markets in the making: Rethinking competition, goods, and innovation (M. Poon, Ed.; O. Custer, Trans.). Zone Books.

Chen

J. Y.

Mao

Qiu

J. L.

(2018). Super-sticky Wechat and Chinese Society. Emerald Publishing.

CNNIC. (2011). Zhongguo Hulianwang Fazhan Baogao 2010 (China Internet Development Report 2010). Publishing House of Electronics Industry.

CNNIC. (2023). Zhongguo Hulianwang Fazhan Baogao 2022 (China Internet Development Report 2022). Publishing House of Electronics Industry.

David

P. A.

(1985). Clio and the economics of QWERTY. The American Economic Review, 75(2), 332–337. https://doi.org/10.2307/1805621

Edgerton

(2011). The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900. Profile Books.

10.

Edwards

(2021). Platforms are infrastructures on fire. In Mullaney

Peters

Hicks

Philip

(Eds.), Your computer is on fire (pp. 313–336). The MIT Press.

11.

Geertz

(2017[1973]). The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books.

12.

Klein

H. K.

Kleinman

D. L.

(2002). The social construction of technology: Structural considerations. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 27(1), 28–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/016224390202700102

13.

Lanmeihui. (2025). Tengxun Yuanbao xiangyao zaizao yige Weixin (Tencent Yuanbao wants to remake a WeChat). 36Kr. https://36kr.com/p/3480634161994631

14.

Larkin

(2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522

15.

Latour

(2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.

16.

T. M.

(2007). Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society, 36(2), 263–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140701254308

17.

Ling

(2023). Nascent, liminal, and emerging technologies. Emerging Media, 1(1), 9–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/27523543231196206

18.

Manky

Mogollón

(2024). How DiDi Chuxing adapts to Latin America’s era of digital platforms. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/07/how-didi-chuxing-adapts-to-latin-americas-era-of-digital-platforms?lang=en

19.

Oudshoorn

Pinch

(Eds.). (2003). How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology. MIT Press.

20.

Pinch

T. J.

Bijker

W. E.

(1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631284014003004

21.

Smart

Wang

Monk

Díaz

Kasirzadeh

Liemt

E. V.

Schmer-Galunder

(2024). Discipline and label: A WEIRD genealogy and social theory of data annotation (No. arXiv:2402.06811). arXiv.

22.

Smith

(2025). OpenAI gave GPT-5 an emotional lobotomy, and it crippled the model. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/91388232/openai-gave-gpt-5-emotional-lobotomy-crippled-model

23.

Stilgoe

Mladenović

(2022). The politics of autonomous vehicles. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01463-3

24.

Xia

(2025). The platformisation tree in China’s AI data annotation ecosystem. Big Data & Society, 12(4), 20539517251386046. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251386046

25.

Zhaibo. (2025). Doubao de yexin yijing fuchu shuimian (Doubao’s ambition has become clear). 36Kr. https://36kr.com/p/3391505418705285

26.

Zhang

Xing

J. L.

(2025). Toward a processual approach to digital platforms’ infrastructuralization: The case of WeChat in China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 18(3), 332–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2025.2517254