AI Rights and Wrongs

Event summary

Theorising Digital Identity Data and Artificial (Un)Intelligence in the Social Cash “Assemblage” – Exclusion or Inclusion of Citizens In Times of Crisis. - Atika Kemal

Digital identity (ID) data, social registries and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are known to be the essential building blocks of an effective ‘adaptive’ social cash system, deployed by governments, to disburse social cash in times of climate/geo-political crisis. However, before I examine the role of data and analytics in the identification process to exclude/include citizens in a social cash programme in Pakistan, it is first necessary to grasp an understanding of the ontological and epistemological nature of digital identity or biometric data. This relates to how data is produced, what constitutes it, and its relationship with other data and technologies - coming together as an assemblage or agencement – a term coined by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). In this talk, I draw on the concepts of abstraction, representation, data double and predictive analysis to theorise the ‘birth’ of the data subject, path of data and its combination/recombination with other socio-economic datasets, analytics and algorithms. The data assemblage, hence, comprises of complex heterogenous relationships, and every unique relationship, surrounding the data and analytic process, underpins ‘relations of exteriority’ (DeLanda, 2006). To this effect, I argue that there is a disconnect between the data subject and their ‘subjectivity’ that is not captured in the data. Other subjectivities are constructed by entities in the assemblage that influence the analytical process for algorithmic decision-making. In the end, through a data justice lens, it is conceded that there are multiple tiers of exclusion embedded not only in the data itself, but through the relational subjectivities constructed by programme and technology designers and embodied in the assemblage. This emphasises the need to implement AI regulations that promote fair and ethical principles and practices for the greater inclusion of citizens in the social cash sector.

Model Collapse: On Capital and White Anxiety - Brett Zehner

What is the relationship between the resurgence of white supremacy and the latest boom in artificial intelligence? At the level of code, we can look to the algorithms that amplify racialized extremism on 4chan. At the level of discourse, we can look to tech moguls calling for the ethnic cleansing of San Francisco, the colonization of Mars, and their sick obsession with white population growth. Even predictive policing and the automated targeting of Palestinians are further symptoms of statistical brutality bleeding into everyday life. As such, cultural theorists have argued over what this present regime of power should be called. Is it still Neo-Liberalism?

Is this Data Colonialism, the New Brutality, or so-called Late Fascism? Following this line of questioning, I argue that despite the differences in these techniques, what creates the historical continuity in the accumulation of power is the ever more abstract formation of whiteness embedded within racial capitalism. Still, in popular discourse, whiteness is undertheorized and often overdetermined as solely a labour investment in privilege. As such, this talk aims to gather preliminary materials for a theory of whiteness within the logics of automation. This talk moves through 3 theses. First, I begin with Tiffany Lethabo King’s contention that white anxiety creates the social a-priori of fungibility. Second, I argue that whiteness insulates itself from social movements and eases economic crises in the mid-20th century by declaring itself the general equivalent in cybernetic economies. And third, I conclude with the present collapse of white anxiety into an ouroboros – a materialist revolt against its own behavioural abstraction. I argue that these three historical movements of whiteness provide a genealogy of AI model collapse. The hope for this talk is to map the shifting grounds for anti-racist and anti-capitalist action against AI realism.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar will take place on Wednesday 13 November at 7pm.

We welcome you to join us at Royal George, 85A Tanners Hill, Deptford, London SE8 4QD.

The seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

Speaker bio

Atika Kemal

Dr. Atika Ahmad Kemal is a Lecturer in Management at Essex Business School and has a background in Information Systems. Her research interests focus on the emerging themes of digital technology innovation intersecting across the interdisciplinary domains of organisation, management and development studies. Mainly, Dr. Kemal’s work revolves around the socio-organisational, political and ethical aspects of the ICT artefact - delineating into areas of institutional change, power dynamics, data and data justice and social/financial inclusion, particularly in the Global South context. She is a critical scholar and is currently researching on digital identity data and AI applications in the social cash sector. Dr Kemal’s research has been published in high quality international journals, including Information Technology and People, Information Technology for Development and Association of Information Systems electronic library (AISeL), besides presenting her research at highly esteemed International Conferences.

Brett Zehner

Brett Zehner is a writer and critical theorist. His research centres on the transnational rise of white supremacy and racial capitalism in relation to big data, abolitionist aesthetics, and critical theories of subjection. He is currently working on his manuscript Capital and White Anxiety. This text provides a critical genealogy of artificial intelligence and white anxieties through various crises of capital accumulation and social struggle. His work has been published in Que Parle, Media-N, and he has exhibited at Transmediale in Berlin. He is currently Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Communications at the University of Exeter. He lives in London.