Much sociotechnical work on fairness in AI focuses on the technologies themselves, including the effects of LLMs upon labor, inequalities of access, or correcting biased datasets, but it is time for our community to face the elephant in the room. This talk will introduce analytical tools from science and technology studies and from economic sociology to sensitize scholars and practitioners to the material political economy of AI. Under the aegis of “AI”, it is argued that what we face in this moment is less about some revolutionary technology and more about network power, market-making, and infrastructural capture, set against the backdrop of global economic uncertainty, political destabilization, and state retreat.
Vertesi will detail how this moment presages the most enduring inequalities our future generations will face and how, unfortunately, several of our community’s most enduring critiques and research questions about ethics or fairness paradoxically serve to support this project instead of undermine it. Since the end game is to render network capture infrastructural, ungovernable and incontrovertible at scale, the speaker will present ways to meet this moment by taking a different approach to our problem-framing, our critique, our scholarship, and our interventions.
This work draws upon a collaborative project with danah boyd, Alex Taylor, and Ben Shestakovsky.
Bio:
Janet Vertesi is a sociologist of science and technology who is interested the relationships between science, technology and society. Her research focuses on NASA robotic spacecraft teams, and how organizational dynamics matter to team decision-making, data-sharing, and scientific results. She also works in Human-Computer Interaction, where her publications include topics such as scientific data-sharing, GPS tracking and notions of privacy, personal archiving practices, and technologies in transnational context. At Princeton, Janet runs Tech/Soc, an interdisciplinary reading group co-sponsored by CITP devoted to questions of technology and society; her courses on the Sociology of Technology are accredited towards the Certificate in Information Technology and Society.
In-person attendance is open to Princeton University faculty, staff and students.
This talk will be livestreamed and recorded. The recording will be posted to the CITP website, the Princeton University Media Central channel and the CITP YouTube channel.
If you need an accommodation for a disability please contact Jean Butcher at butcher@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.