Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society

The field of education is in disarray due to the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). There is a lot of disagreement in the education community over its value. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of AI in education (AIED) was taken up as the study's objective in such a scattered condition. The research was directed by a single research question. The SWOT theoretical framework serves as the foundation for this study. The corpus of published literature was gathered from the Google Scholar database. Data shows that the use of AI in teaching and learning, as well as higher education, and early childhood education are areas where prior research has excelled (strengths). The structural/functional features of AI and its ethical applications are its main shortcomings (weaknesses) in AIED. There will likely be opportunities in teaching and learning, higher education, and other AI applications. The researcher’ attention is drawn to the ethical use of AI and its administrative ramifications (threats). A broad SWOT analysis of AIED was developed as a study output to help educational stakeholders and providers of AI services make well-informed decisions towards strategic management of education in harnessing the potentials of AIED. Lastly, suggestions have been extended for future approaches to the research challenge.

In recent years, the AI industry has shown growing interest in addressing challenges associated with ageing. A wide range of devices and digital artefacts have been developed to support the health needs of older adults, enhance their mobility, and improve the conditions of older workers. However, discourse on ageing in the broader tech industry—and, by extension, in AI—often adopts a paternalistic stance and relies on harmful tropes about older users. In this paper, we analyse corporate communications in the AI industry about ageing, on the premise that discourse shapes how technologies are designed. The analysis was conducted between January and July 2024, focusing on global companies that develop AI technologies for healthcare, mobility, and recruitment relevant in the European context. We found that dominant narratives about older people legitimise techno-solutionism. By framing older adults as a societal burden and overlooking their well-being, these narratives make technological “fixes” appear socially acceptable even when they offer insufficient support.

This paper revisits nanotechnology as a once-speculative field that attracted significant interest from science and technology studies (STS) scholars during its promissory phase, yet has received comparatively little attention now that it is partially institutionalised and entangled in the everyday practices of research and innovation. We approach nanotechnology as a compelling case that now offers the opportunity to study what becomes of technoscientific promises after the hype fades. Drawing on sociological, qualitative, in-depth interviews with 34 scientists working in university-based nanoscience, we examine how the promissory horizons of nanotechnology confront the structural realities of academic science today and identify four key themes: (1) the persistence of idealised visions of science and its societal role; (2) the complexities of university–industry entanglements; (3) growing pressures to commercialise; and (4) limited, often administrative, engagement with ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI). Together, these themes reveal how promissory understandings of what science ‘is’ and what science ‘does’ exist in tension with the realities of everyday institutional practices. We argue that revisiting nano through the lens of STS highlights how speculative ideals become sedimented in routine practice and underscores the need for sustained attention to the afterlives of technoscientific promises across emerging and established domains