Understanding the Adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence within Communities of Practice: A Cross-Practice, Machine Learning-Based Lexical Study

Communities of Practice (CoPs) groups share knowledge and expertise across disciplinary collectives and industrial sectors. This theoretical construct assumes learning occurs in and across societal contexts where individuals mutually engage in collective, symbolically shared repertoires. Of late, CoPs have been explored regarding the use of technology platforms to enhance learning and to extend symbolically collective learning activities. However, the extensive and recent saturation of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) calls for inquiry into how CoPs understand and adopt this ubiquitous technology discussion relative to shared repertoires. This is especially true given the lack of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research into GenAI adoption at scale. The present study seeks to uncover how the prominent CoPs of Finance, Art, and Software Development understand GenAI as they discuss their technology adoption practices in online forums. Specifically, more than 2.1 million words of community discussion were examined lexically to reveal the manner by which varied CoPs generate shared repertoires for their community members. Findings indicate that types of practice disciplines relate to the lexical dialectics of Practice/Technology, People/Replacements, and Authenticity/Inauthenticity, as well as insightful discourses regarding what counts as work and adoption. A first for HCI, CoPs, and GenAI research, this study provides additional suggestions for future CoPs symbolically shared repertoires relative to new technologies, as well as how GenAI may be implicated in the adoption, work, and learning-based praxes of heterogeneous disciplinary communities. “Where the artificiality of all that’s being created, the lack of that ‘spark’ that makes an image, a design, even the concept for a product will become so sterile, so overly tasteless that a new culture of ‘human generated content and products’ will become, first a contra-culture, and then a possible rebirth of what really makes our creation unique: That the things we make as humans are our own and nurture us as a species.” “It does not replace programmers, c’mon. It will make getting a job for those without prior experience much harder tho’. But generally speaking, it’s just a tool.”