Journal article
Artificial intelligence in the colonial matrix of power
- Abstract:
- Drawing on the analytic of the “colonial matrix of power” developed by Aníbal Quijano within the Latin American modernity/coloniality research program, this article theorises how a system of coloniality underpins the structuring logic of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We develop a framework for critiquing the regimes of global labour exploitation and knowledge extraction that are rendered invisible through discourses of the purported universality and objectivity of AI. Through bringing the political economy literature on AI production into conversation with scholarly work on decolonial AI and the modernity/coloniality research program, we advance three main arguments. First, the global economic and political power imbalances in AI production are inextricably linked to the continuities of historical colonialism, constituting the colonial supply chain of AI. Second, this is produced through an international division of digital labour that extracts value from majority world labour for the benefit of Western technology companies. Third, this perpetuates hegemonic knowledge production through Western values and knowledge that marginalises non-Western alternatives within AI’s production and limits the possibilities for decolonising AI. By locating the production of AI systems within the colonial matrix of power, we contribute to critical and decolonial literature on the legacies of colonialism in AI and the hierarchies of power and extraction that shape the development of AI today.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 790.8KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s13347-023-00687-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Philosophy & Technology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 36
- Issue:
- 4
- Article number:
- 80
- Publication date:
- 2023-12-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-12-02
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2210-5441
- ISSN:
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2210-5433
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1595684
- Local pid:
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pubs:1595684
- Deposit date:
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2024-09-26
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Muldoon and Wu
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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