“Dramatic statements about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence for humanity abound, as an industry of experts claims that AI is poised to reshape nearly every sphere of life. Who profits from the idea that the age of AI has arrived? Why do ideas of AI’s transformative potential keep reappearing in social and political discourse, and how are they linked to broader political agendas?
Yarden Katz reveals the ideology embedded in the concept of artificial intelligence, contending that it both serves and mimics the logic of white supremacy. He demonstrates that understandings of AI, as a field and a technology, have shifted dramatically over time based on the needs of its funders and the professional class that formed around it. From its origins in the Cold War military-industrial complex through its present-day Silicon Valley proselytizers and eager policy analysts, AI has never been simply a technical project enabled by larger data and better computing. Drawing on intimate familiarity with the field and its practices, Katz instead asks us to see how AI reinforces models of knowledge that assume white male superiority and an imperialist worldview. Only by seeing the connection between artificial intelligence and whiteness can we prioritize alternatives to the conception of AI as an all-encompassing technological force.”
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Formation
1. In the Service of Empire
2. In the Service of Capital
Part II: Self and the Social Order
3. Epistemic Forgeries and Ghosts in the Machine
4. Adaptation, Not Abolition: Critical AI Experts and Carceral-Positive Logic
5. Artificial Whiteness
Part III: Alternatives
6. Dissenting Visions: From Autopoietic Love to Embodied War
7. A Generative Refusal
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
