Neo-colonial Visions: Artificial Intelligence and Epistemic Violence

    Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk

    Description

    Artificial Intelligence (AI), often presented as an objective “view from nowhere”, constitutes a regime of power that further establishes historical forms of bias and evolving models of subjugation. A key component in this process, this presentation will suggest, involves the extraction of data from digital images in order to train AI. How, therefore, do we understand the transformation of images from their symbolic and representational contexts to their contemporary function as sources of digital data? Bringing together researchers in the field of visual culture and AI technology, and taking as its starting point the representational biases of colonial imagery, Anthony Downey and Maya Indira Ganesh will explore how the digital image has increasingly become the means to extract, archive and repurpose information. Based on the extraction and statistical repurposing of data, they will observe how AI renders entire communities susceptible to encoded and overt forms of epistemological violence. Designed for the purpose of training machine vision and the apparatus of AI, these repurposed “images” reveal, furthermore, how the extractive practices of colonialism have become inexorably aligned with corporate interests and neo-colonial economies of data extraction.
    Period29 Mar 2023
    Event titleNeo-colonial Visions: Artificial Intelligence and Epistemic Violence
    Event typeConference
    Location London, United KingdomShow on map
    Degree of RecognitionInternational

    Keywords

    • AI
    • Drones
    • Intelligent monitoring
    • governance
    • visual culture

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