Critical Data & AI Lecture Series #4. Reimagining networks and geographies of AI and Machine Learning

Lecture by Dr. Amir Anwar, University of Edinburgh.

Abstract

From self-checkouts to self-driving cars to social media newsfeed to surveillance systems, artificial intelligence (AI) is part of our lives whether we know it or not. Yet, AI remains an enigma: little is known about how these systems are made. Following Kate Crawford’s (2021: 8) declaration that ‘AI is neither artificial nor intelligent’, this talk is an attempt to unpack some of the material, social, political and environmental forces underpinning it.

In doing so this paper develops the framework of planetary production networks: ever expanding networks of production, powered by labour, data, computational systems, and natural environment that help generate AI systems. The notion of ‘planetary’ refers to the uneven geographical landscape where hyper-scale connectivity infrastructure and computational regimes (Narayan, 2021) exist side by side with borders (natural and man-made), and asymmetrical political, social, cultural and institutional relations. Thus, ‘Planetary AI’ emerges from these paradoxical forces as uneven geographies of production and ultimately accumulation. For example, ChatGPT (an AI chatbot) depend on data centres which need millions of gallons of water to cool servers, thus destroying natural aquifers. It also relies on hidden army of precarious human data annotators to generate accurate results (Anwar and Graham, 2022; Gray and Suri, 2019). Then we have users of ChatGPT that need smartphones which would not exist without coltan from the Democratic Republic of Congo or copper from Chile. Effectively, planetary AI signifies ‘the age of polycrises’ (Tooze, 2022) converging in space and time. Ultimately, the article addresses recent calls by some to explore the dark sides of economic geography such as labour and environment (Yeung, 2023) to fully appreciate the threats unfolding across the planet (Barnes, 2023).

Bio

Dr. Mohammad Amir Anwar is a Lecturer in African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh. His work deals with the developmental impacts of globalization, looking behind the scenes at human labour in digital capitalism, the future of work and workers, the global gig economy, and labour movements in Africa. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and the School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg.

Dr. Anwar’s most recent book, The Digital Continent: Placing Africa in Planetary Networks of Work(2022) is out open-access with Oxford University Press. He has moreover published articles on digital labour, gig economies and data work in journals including Environment and Planning A, Competition and Change, Globalizations, Review of African Political Economy, Journal of Modern African Studies, Gender and Development, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, International Labour Review, First Monday, and Urban Forum. He is currently co-editing a special issue of Big Data & Society on “Datafied Development” with Rafael Grohmann, Julian Posada and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup.

Please sign-up with lora@hum.ku.dk by 15 April latest if you want coffee, tea and cake. Seating is limited.

About the lecture series

The Critical Data and AI Lecture series is organized by Louis Ravn and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup as a joint venture between the research projects AI REUSE (DFF) and Data Loss: The Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies (DALOSS, ERC Stg).