Book section : Chapter
Follow the thing: AI
- Abstract:
- Commodity fetishism is a concept that illustrates how capitalist societies render invisible the materials, infrastructures, and producers behind commodities. This lack of awareness about the costs involved in producing a commodity is, as critical geographer David Harvey asserted, “cause for concern” (1990, p. 423). In the era of AI, where this technology has become economically and geopolitically relevant, this concern becomes even more persistent. Commodity fetishism obscures geographies and bodies behind the cost of the race in making this technology. This chapter defetishises AI commodities by revealing the hidden geographies and social relationships embedded in the production of AI. To do so, it proposes to examine AI commodity chains through the follow the thing method by tracing the journey of GPUs, from raw materials to e-waste. This approach contributes to discussions on AI commodities and its materiality by revealing the environmental impacts emerging at each stage of its commodity chains. Defetishising the materiality of AI entails bringing awareness of AI commodity chains, its costs, and its environmental impacts to expose how it is reproducing and perpetuating environmental conflicts worldwide.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 362.8KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/978-3-032-09748-4_2
Authors
Contributors
+ Mollen, A
- Role:
- Editor
+ Jansen, F
- Role:
- Editor
+ Kannengießer, S
- Role:
- Editor
+ Velkova, J
- Role:
- Editor
- Publisher:
- Palgrave Macmillan Cham
- Host title:
- AI infrastructures and sustainability
- Pages:
- 31-49
- Chapter number:
- 2
- Series:
- Palgrave Studies in European Communication Research and Education
- Place of publication:
- Cham, Switzerland
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-14
- Edition:
- 1
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2948-2380
- ISSN:
-
2948-2372
- EISBN:
- 9783032097484
- ISBN:
- 9783032097477
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
-
Chapter
- Pubs id:
-
2393775
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2393775
- Deposit date:
-
2026-05-14
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Ana Valdivia
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), 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 license and indicate if changes were made
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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