This working paper presents an exploratory qualitative study on how responsibility roles emerge in artificial intelligence governance across socio-technical systems. Drawing on sensemaking theory, socio-technical systems perspectives, role theory, and governance-as-practice approaches, the study analyzes publicly available professional discourse across healthcare, insurance, regulatory, research, and technology domains over a one-month observation period. Using inductive qualitative coding of several thousand public professional posts and discussions, the paper identifies recurring patterns of influence, mediation, translation, and accountability that manifest as emergent governance roles. The findings suggest that responsibility in AI ecosystems is dynamically negotiated through interaction rather than institutionally fixed. The paper contributes an initial taxonomy of emergent responsibility roles and proposes hypotheses for future empirical research. This version represents an analytical snapshot within an ongoing longitudinal study and is intended to invite scholarly feedback and interdisciplinary dialogue.
Terrance Biederer (Fri,) studied this question.