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Chapter 11: What does AI do to politics?

This chapter considers the relationships between artificial intelligence (AI) and politics in a way that allows us to appreciate both what AI does to politics and what is political about AI. The chapter examines how AI has been used in different humanitarian settings, with proponents suggesting that AI could provide a technological solution to some complex political problems. However, this chapter considers how the focus on the technological can displace fraught political questions about how we should respond when people are suffering, how different problems are categorised and assessed and how resources are allocated in response to these assessments. Crucially, this chapter draws attention to the interplay between human rules and data-driven outputs.

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Chapter Abstract

This chapter considers the relationships between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and politics in a way that allows us to appreciate both what AI does to politics and what is political about AI. The chapter examines how AI has been used in different humanitarian settings, with proponents suggesting that AI could provide a technological solution to some complex political problems. However, this chapter considers how the focus on the technological can displace fraught political questions about how we should respond when people are suffering, how different problems are categorised and assessed, and how resources are allocated in response to these assessments. Crucially, this chapter draws attention to the interplay between human rules and data-driven outputs.

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Further reading

Amoore, Louise (2023) ‘Machine Learning Political Orders’, Review of International Studies 49, 1: 20-36.
Aradau, Claudia and Tobias Blanke (2022) Algorithmic Reason: The New Government of Self and Other (Oxford University Press).
Bucher, Taina (2018) If…Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics (Oxford University Press).
Burrell, Jenna (2016) ‘How the Machine Thinks: Understanding Opacity in Machine Learning Algorithms’, Big Data and Society 3:1.
Halpern, Orit (2014) Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason Since 1945 (Duke University Press).
Kitchin, Rob and Martin Dodge (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life (MIT Press).

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Websites

Algorithmic Justice League
https://www.ajl.org

Wired magazine article about Rohingya
https://www.wired.com/story/united-nations-refugees-biometric-database-rohingya-myanmar-bangladesh/

Lighthouse report and Rotterdam algorithm
https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/suspicion-machines/

Time Magazine and the Sama workers
https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/