More Connected, Less Connection: Belonging, Leisure, and Artificial Intelligence

Moral discussions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and leisure may well be intellectually stimulating, but approaching AI from the binary of bad vs good is unproductive. Therefore, rather than assessing worth, this article positions AI diagnostically, to demonstrate the ways in which it can be used as a lens to unpack the hegemonic forces that leisure science scholars have already made strides in unpacking. It serves as a reminder—for those of us (critical leisure scholars) who seek to dismantle unjust hierarchies of belonging—that we must not be distracted by debates about AI’s possibilities and pitfalls. Instead, it is vital we recognize that the issues we face remain the same, albeit they do now wear a more advanced technological costume.