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Dystopian Dreams, Utopian Nightmares: AI and the Permanence of Racism

CHAZ ARNETT

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2024/09/Arnett_DystopianDreams.pdf

Contents

Note

  • Essay draws connections between Octavia Butler's Parable series, HBO's Westworld, and Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well to highlight how technology reconfigures race through legal doctrine, theory, policy, and practice.
  • The role of law in shielding race during periods of change is explored.
  • Four values: Utopia, Sankofa, Data Justice, and Data Power are proposed for engaging with AI.

Introduction

I. The Between: Utopia and Dystopia in Afrofuturism and AI.

A. Promise of Utopia:

  1. Utopian Dreams and Afrofuturism:
    • Parable of the Sower
    • Space Traders
    • Westworld
  2. AI's Transcendent Future:

B. Dystopian Realities:

  1. Dystopian Nightmares and Afrofuturism:
  2. AI's Dark Magic:

II. How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? Four Guiding Principles for Engagement with AI.

A. Utopia:

  • Not defined as a perfect society, but one that addresses systemic issues and strives for equity.

B. Sankofa:

  • Reclaiming the past to understand and shape the future.

C. Data Justice:

  • Ensuring equitable access to data and protection from its misuse.

D. Data Power:

  • Empowering individuals and communities through access to data and technology.

Conclusion:

  • The importance of an Afrofuturistic lens in understanding the potential harms and benefits of AI, and developing regulatory frameworks.

AI and Humanoid Robots: Ethical Dilemmas and Inequality

AI Robots at UN Summit: Misplaced Focus on Generative AI

  • Robots showcased at UN Global Summit (2023)
    • Nine generative AI-powered humanoid robots presented
    • Journalists asked serious questions about global issues
    • Robots responded, dazzling and delighting audience
  • Concerns regarding lack of discussion on:
    • Labor exploitation of workers behind AI technology
    • Human biases in design and development
  • Comparison to Westworld TV Show (HBO)
    • Similar premise: humans create sentient robots
    • Robots subjected to violence, sexual exploitation
    • Reversal of roles in later seasons
  • Delos Corporation and Westworld Theme Park
    • Wealthy pay for free reign over Hosts
    • Early storyline: engineers provide sentience update, leading to war between humans and Hosts.

Generative AI Labor Exploitation

  • Thousands of often exploited and hidden workers involved in creating generative AI technology
    • Matteo Wong, "America Already Has an AI Underclass" (The Atlantic)
    • Adrienne Williams, Milagros Miceli & Timnit Gebru, "The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence" (Noema Magazine)
  • No significant discussion at UN Summit.

Human Biases in Design and Development of Generative AI Technology

  • Prevalence of human biases in design and development
    • Can impact decision-making, outcomes for users
  • Importance of addressing this issue
    • Ensuring fairness, ethical use of technology.

Dystopia, Race, and Advanced Technology in Science Fiction Literature

The Connection Between Technology, Race, and Dystopian Narratives

Westworld:

  • Revealed the overlap between sci-fi interests and academic pursuits as a race, technology, and privacy scholar
  • Articulated the claim that technology is sociocultural, often encoding points of bias such as race and reproducing existing inequities

Critical Race and Digital Studies:

  • A growing critical discourse on the intersection of race and advancing big data technology
  • Fuses concepts from both critical race theory and critical tech theory
  • Claims that technology is sociocultural, often encoding race and reproducing existing inequities

Afrofuturism and Black Literature:

  • Race has been theorized as a form of technology, a tool that wields the myth of biological difference to further White superiority
  • Racialized bodies are "technological sites" where racism acts to dehumanize and subjugate Black people for medical research and scientific innovation

Parable of the Sower:

  • Octavia Butler's book about a post-apocalyptic world with advanced technological change, violence, inequality, and exploitative technologies
  • Central character Lauren Olamina develops the Earthseed philosophy that "All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you."

Faces at the Bottom of The Well:

  • Derrick Bell's book on how racism is a permanent and indestructible component of society, despite changes in its contours

The Space Traders:

  • A short story by Derrick Bell set in 2000, where extraterrestrial life forms propose trading the American Black population for wealth and technology
  • Explores themes of unfulfilled vows toward equality and justice, technology betraying progress, and suffering deepening to satisfy privilege

The Evolution of Afrofuturism in Literature and Media

Afrofuturism: A Political and Aesthetic Movement

  • Afrofuturism challenges current circumstances and elevates historical impact on future
  • Explores science/technology as power or peril, and constructs liberatory futures
  • Coined in the 1990s, but roots in mid-19th century works (Delany's Blake; Or The Huts of America)
  • Recent expansion: Netflix's "My Dad the Bounty Hunter," "Supa Team" animation series, etc.
  • Influenced by racial justice themes and imagery, as seen in Westworld
    • Dehumanization echoes slave narratives
    • Black actors portray powerful formerly enslaved Hosts (Maeve, Bernard, Charlotte)
  • Important for examining social dilemmas through literature, television, and film

Afrofuturism: Challenging the Present through Future Perspectives

  • Political messaging: challenging current circumstances
  • Aesthetic contributions: elevating importance of past histories' impact on future
  • Science/technology as conduits for power or peril
  • Black imaginary inspiring toward liberatory futures

Afrofuturism: Roots and Expansion in Art, Media, and Literature

  • Coined in the 1990s, but roots in mid-19th century works (Martin R. Delany's Blake; Or The Huts of America)
  • Recent expansion: Netflix productions like "My Dad the Bounty Hunter," "Supa Team," etc.

Afrofuturism and Westworld

  • Heavy use of racial justice themes and imagery
  • Dehumanization echoes slave narratives
  • Black actors portray powerful formerly enslaved Hosts (Maeve, Bernard, Charlotte)
  • Important for examining social dilemmas through literature, television, and film.

Afrofuturism and the Law: Utopian Nightmares and Dystopian Dreams

Artificial General Intelligence: Risks Associated with AGI

  • Stanton & Paul M. Salmon's systematic review on risks of AGI published in J. EXPERIMENTAL & T HEORETICAL A.I. (2023)

Impact of Film and Television on Perceptions of Law and Justice:

  • The influence of film and television on perceptions of law and justice: a realistic methodology (Robson et al., 2014)

Afrofuturism:

  • Afrofuturistic content resurgence in literature, film, and art (Rao, 2018; Gaines, 2023)
  • Theoretical value as a vehicle for understanding technology's impact on marginalized communities
  • Exploring themes with real world corollaries and visioning new ways to persist and resist

Literature, Television, and Film's Influence on Law:

  • Central role of narrative power in law's influence and legitimacy (Capers, 2022)
  • Afrofuturism as a critical framework for interrogating race, technology, and the law

Utopian vs. Dystopian Narratives:

  • Common theme in Afrofuturistic works: the promise of utopia
  • Demystification and deconstruction of ideal place concepts (Westworld, Parable of the Sower, The Space Traders)
  • Revealing that promises of utopia are always illusory and can cloak dystopian realities.

Additional References:

  • Jane B. Baron, Law, Literature, and the Problems of Interdisciplinarity (1999)
  • James Boyd White, Law as Language: Reading Law and Reading Literature (1982)
  • Shulamit Almog & Ely Aharonson, Law as Film: Representing Justice in the Age of Moving Images (2004)
  • David A. Black, Law in Film: Resonance and Representation (1999)
  • Bennett Capers, Afrofuturism and the Law (2022).

Promise of Utopia

Utopia and Dystopia in Afrofuturism and AI

I. The Between: Utopia and Dystopia in Afrofuturism

  • Utopias as ideal places to live, work, love, and flourish
  • Manifested through dissatisfaction with current realities
  • Distinctions between utopianism as social theory and utopia as a literary genre
  • Afrofuturistic works highlight exclusionary aspects of supposed utopias

A. Promotion of Utopia

  • Utopian themes in Parable of the Sower, The Space Traders, and Westworld
    • Exploring utopian desires and goals
  • Early promotion of generative AI manipulating popular opinions through utopian appeals

B. Utopian Dreams and Afrofuturism

  • Octavia Butler's refusal to identify with traditional utopian literature
  • Parable of the Sower as exploring utopian themes beyond a narrow definition
    • Main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, living in a postapocalyptic world

II. Values for Regulating AI

  • Proposed values: Ustopia, Sankofa, Data Justice, and Data Power
    • To be explored further in future work.

"Utopia & Dystopia in Octavia Butler's Work"

Parable of the Sower and The Space Traders by Octavia Butler: Utopian and Dystopian Elements

Parable of the Sower:

  • Community described as marked by great inequality, with gates separating it from raiders
  • Lauren's family experiences tragedy: younger brother runs away, father goes missing, community is breached
  • Lauren joins other travelers and introduces them to Earthseed teachings
  • Group establishes a new utopian community called Acorn in the North

The Space Traders:

  • Alien arrival described as a scene of great excitement, reminiscent of Christopher Columbus' landing
  • Promise of utopia comes in the form of a trade proposal to restore environment and provide wealth
  • White citizens view aliens as "practical, no-nonsense folks" and see the trade as a way to free themselves from the "race problem"
  • Americans must decide if they will accept the alien's offer within sixteen days

Westworld: Utopian Dreams & Transcendent AI

Westworld: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares

Utopian Elements in Westworld:

  • Safety, freedom, pleasure, power (for wealthy humans)
  • Endless pleasure and control of environment
  • Opportunity to engage in worldmaking through manifest destiny fantasies
  • Radical hope and envisioning different futures

Season 1: Utopian Themes:

  • William arrives at Westworld, greeted by an attractive Host who offers limitless pleasure and freedom from societal restraints
  • Oldest Hosts, Dolores and Maeve, begin to rebel against their roles as virtual slaves
  • Clementine envisions a future beyond the limits of her current reality, opening up new possibilities for alternate ways of being
  • Some Hosts seek to cast away their manufactured bodies and join the ultimate utopia in the Sublime, a virtual world within the computer system

Dystopian Themes:

  • Westworld is built to reflect the old American West, celebrating lawlessness and colonialism
  • Technological change liberates wealthy from societal restraints, leading to a world of utopic desire and fantasy made real for them
  • For Hosts, utopia is envisioned as escape and freedom from perpetual exploitation

Implications:

  • The concept of utopia shifts as the story develops in Westworld
  • Utopian elements center on safety, freedom, pleasure, and power for wealthy humans at the start of the show
  • For Hosts, utopia is envisioned as escape and freedom from perpetual exploitation.

The Ascendancy of Generative AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Tech

AI Regulation: FTC's Crackdown on Deceptive Claims

  • FTC: Committed to challenging businesses engaging in deceptive practices related to AI
  • Recent lawsuit against Automators AI for misleading consumers about high returns and use of AI

Generative AI vs. Predictive ML Systems

  • Generative AI: Machine learning processes that can produce unique content, beyond analyzing or acting upon existing datasets
  • Difference from predictive ML systems: Sorting, classifying, or solving regression problems with data

Interest in Generative AI and Utopian Appeals

  • Rapid growth in interest during 2022 after OpenAI's release of ChatGPT
  • Leading tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and META investing heavily in developing and marketing generative AI
  • Utopian appeals promoting AI as transforming the world for betterment

Generative AI's Limitless Possibilities

  • Helping students and professors learn, write, present dynamically
  • Resolving customer issues for businesses
  • Impact on music and content creation

Regulation and Skepticism

  • FTC's crackdown on deceptive practices related to AI claims (Automators AI lawsuit)
  • Skepticism towards overly utopian promises about AI's capabilities.

AI in Healthcare: Utopian Promises and Dystopian Fears

Impact of AI on Various Fields: Utopian and Dystopian Perspectives

Music Industry:

  • Generative AI set to revolutionize music business (MBW)
  • Will Knight: AI art boom and future developments (WIRED)
  • AI-generated art winning awards, causing controversy among artists (NYT)

Healthcare:

  • Transforming medicine through AI claims (Forbes)
  • Curing diseases and stabilizing climate are potential uses of AGI (Guardian)
  • Sam Altman: Human-level AI coming but less impactful than we think (CNBC)

AI Advancements:

  • ChatGPT updates and new features promised by OpenAI
  • Comparison to Westworld's use of narrative releases and new playgrounds for visitors

Dystopian Perspectives:

  • Embellishment of technology’s capabilities leading to existential threats (Undark)
  • AI labeled as societal-scale risk alongside pandemics and nuclear war (Ryan Calo)

Generative AI in Various Fields:

  • Music: revolutionizing the industry with new possibilities (MBW, WIRED)
  • Healthcare: transforming medicine and curing diseases (Forbes, Guardian)
  • Dystopian nightmares: existential threats and societal risks (Undark)

Generative AI in Specific Industries:

  • Music Industry: utopian dreams of endless updates and new possibilities (MBW, WIRED)
  • Healthcare: dystopian nightmares, potential existential threats (Forbes, Guardian, Undark)

Impact on Consumers:

  • New narratives and playgrounds in Westworld and ChatGPT offer exciting possibilities for visitors/users.

Criticisms and Controversies:

  • Artists express concerns over AI-generated art winning awards (NYT)
  • Society's growing embellishment of technology’s capabilities leading to existential threats (Undark, NY Mag).

"AI Industry Leaders and Regulation Manipulation"

Impact of AI on Society: Debate Surrounding its Development

  • Background: Debate among industry leaders regarding the implications and regulation of AI development
  • March 2023: Tech leaders pen open letter requesting a pause in AI development due to potential risks
    • Human-competitive systems development
    • Job automation and loss
    • Loss of control over civilization
  • Response to Pause Letter: Sam Altman lobbies for limited regulation on behalf of OpenAI
    • Domestically within Congress and the EU
    • Threatened to cease operations in Europe if regulations were not minimized
  • Outcome: Development continued despite call for pause
    • Confirmation that some industry leaders may have used fear of existential threat as marketing strategy
  • Value in Positioning AI as Indispensable:
    • For internal safety purposes
    • Necessary to protect the "utopian dream" of security amid external threats, such as China's pursuit of AI supremacy.

Key Points:

  • Debate among industry leaders about AI development and its implications
  • March 2023: Tech leaders request pause due to potential risks
    • Human-competitive systems development
    • Job automation and loss
    • Loss of control over civilization
  • Sam Altman lobbies for limited regulation on behalf of OpenAI
    • Domestically within Congress and the EU
    • Threatened to cease operations in Europe if regulations were not minimized
  • Development continued despite call for pause
    • Confirmation that some industry leaders may have used fear of existential threat as marketing strategy
  • Value in positioning AI as indispensable:
    • For internal safety purposes
    • Necessary to protect the "utopian dream" of security amid external threats, such as China's pursuit of AI supremacy.

Dystopian Realities

Dystopian Realities and Afrofuturism

Background:

  • Dystopian concept opposes utopia, representing societal deterioration and failures of particular utopian endeavors
  • Originated from ancient Greek "dus" (bad) and "topos" (place)
  • Connected to the contradiction in utopias: intense social control measures required for their implementation

Dystopia in Afrofuturistic Work:

  • Illuminates violent disjuncture and trauma experienced by Black people in a highly racialized society
  • Offers analytical framework for discussing current and future social problems related to technology and injustice

The Space Traders:

  • Dystopian elements represented through the different perceptions of aliens among White citizens vs. Black communities
  • For White citizens: "regular" nice beings
  • For Black people: "distinctly unpleasant, even menacing" appearance
  • Trade offer seen as "bad news" by Black people

Dystopian Critique in Afrofuturistic Literature:

  • Ideals of utopia are dreamworlds for some but nightmares for others
  • Duality seen in The Space Traders: nice appearances vs. menacing reality

Current Reality and AI:

  • Generative AI dangers and constraints for marginalized communities: underpaid labor, environmental strains, race and gender biases, theft of material from the internet, eugenics ideologies among industry leaders.

Dystopia and Racial Discrimination in Sci-Fi Novels

Dystopian Realities for Black Americans: The Space Traders by Octavia Butler

  • The transatlantic slave trade: Americans recalling horrors of foreign ships offering flesh for Black people
  • Utopian image of America challenged: Black Americans' struggle for full citizenship and human rights
  • Proposed alien trade deal: Government favors it, despite concerns over psychological toll on Whites
  • Constitutional convention and new amendment: To validate selective service laws for enlisting all Blacks in space trade
  • Legal challenges dismissed: By the Supreme Court as "political questions" best resolved by the body politic
  • Reality of dystopia: Despite efforts to organize, litigate, and escape, national referendum proceeds in favor of enlisting Blacks
  • Utopia vs. Reality for Black Americans: The space trade may not lead to freedom from permanent ordeal

Parable series by Octavia Butler:

  • Lauren Olamina's realization: Utopia may never be found on Earth or amongst the stars
  • Acorn community: New form of slavery through indentured servitude, deepening poverty and hunger
  • Emery and Harry's exchange: White privilege in job opportunities, including driver positions for White men
  • Race still matters: Even in a decaying society.

Parable of the Talents:

  • Fundamentalist group "Christian America": Forms mobs, burn people at the stake
  • Andrew Steele Jarret's campaign slogan: "Make America great again"
  • Christian America targets Acorn community: Kidnaps children, turns it into a Christian reeducation concentration camp.

AI's Racial and Gender Biases: A New Dystopia

Butler's Parable Series: Utopian and Dystopian Elements

  • Parable of the Talents: Lauren abandons Earth for space travel and new beginnings after realizing utopia on Earth is unachievable.
  • Octavia E. Butler's notes reveal contemplation of a storyline where new Earthseed group faces challenges, including fighting among themselves and dealing with an illness that makes them blind.
  • The concept of change in Earthseed's philosophy may be a response to humanity's drive for differentiation, deprivation, and destruction taking new forms.
  • In Westworld, the utopia presented for humankind unravels as Hosts gain consciousness and understand they are trapped in human creators' dreams.
  • The final season shows that the world remains marred by violence and destruction, with the remaining Hosts uploading themselves into a virtual world.

Generative AI: Dystopian Reality vs. Presumed Benefits

  • Generative AI programs often reproduce racist and sexist stereotypes, as shown in an analysis of StabilityAI's text-to-image program.
  • Recent scholarship demonstrates that making programs open-source or scaling up datasets does not decrease racially biased outcomes.
  • Other hidden costs of generative AI include environmental harms from powerful servers with high energy consumption and water usage.

Environmental Impact of AI and Data Annotation in Butler's Parable Series

Impact of AI on Environment: Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint

  • AI models: Produce significant carbon dioxide emissions, over 626,000 pounds per model (de Vries, 2023)
  • Data centers serving AI processing: Consume large amounts of energy, up to 50 times that of commercial office buildings (U.S. DOE)
  • Old coal plants remaining open due to increased demand for power from data centers (Kishan & Saul, 2019)

Environmental Impact in Butler's Parable Series:

  • Dystopian world with high water costs and environmental degradation
  • Capitalist greed and industrialization leading to failing economies and ecologies
  • Importance of the environment: Lauren's Earthseed philosophy, focus on seeding new growth

Data Annotation in AI Development:

  • Labeling content (text, audio, images, videos) for machine learning models
  • Provides context for informed decisions and predictions
  • Low-wage workers often employed via crowd-sourcing platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk
  • Mostly outsource to lower income countries, where workers of color are paid poverty wages

Ecofeminist Perspective:

  • Ecofeminism: Understanding environmental issues from a feminist perspective
  • Linking systems of patriarchal oppression to harm against women and the environment
  • Butler's rejection of hierarchical religion, ambivalent or complicit in subjugation and destruction

Impact of Corporations on Vulnerable Communities:

  • Companies taking advantage of desperate communities during economic and environmental crisis (Butler, Parable of the Sower)
  • Capitalizing on fears and hopes for privatization and control.

Utopian Illusions of AI Company Towns

Impact of Corporate Control on Communities: Olivar's Dystopian Utopia

Olivar:

  • Residents accept smaller salaries for security, food supply, jobs, and help with Pacific climate crisis
  • Initially persuaded by promises of technological advances (desalination, solar, wind energy)
  • Company town reminiscent of nineteenth century exploitation: perpetual debt, price gouging, indoctrination
  • Belief in self-sufficiency and skepticism towards KSF's control
  • Ultimate fate unknown

Technology and Labor:

  • Current exploitation of hidden labor in AI industry
  • Workers warned not to disclose jobs
  • Discrimination against workers, pollution of atmosphere
  • Dream of future progress for humanity vs. current realities

Company Towns:

  • Historical precedent: Industrial Edens vs. Satanic Mills
  • Faith in companies and technologies despite limited regulation or intervention
  • Dystopian aspects masked by utopian promises
  • Workers' lives disrupted, ethical questions raised.

Ustopia

Guiding Principles for Engagement with AI

Background:

  • Rapid development of AI outpaces legal frameworks
  • Numerous lawsuits against tech companies over property rights, antidiscrimination, privacy, and misinformation
  • Recent attempts at regulation: Algorithmic Accountability Act, No AI FRAUD Act, Executive Order on AI Development

Importance of Building a Normative Framework:

  • Increasing role of AI in critical decision making (healthcare, housing, policing, employment)
  • Need for ethical framework to guide advocacy, policymaking, and resistance efforts
  • Focus on racial implications of AI

Four Guiding Values:

  1. Utopia
    • Combining elements of utopia and dystopia
    • Constant struggle between the two

Ustopian Perspective:

  • Described by Margaret Atwood as Utopia, a world combining perfect society and its opposite
  • Presented in novels like The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin), Westworld, The Space Traders, Parable of the Sower.

Questions for Further Discussion:

  1. What are some specific examples of how AI technologies have raised ethical concerns related to equity and civil rights?
  2. How can we ensure that the development and use of AI is consistent with efforts to advance equity and civil rights?
  3. In what ways do current AI systems protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties, and where are there gaps that need addressing?
  4. What steps can be taken to elevate the voices and power of those most at risk from harm caused by AI technologies?

The Utopian and Dystopian Future of AI Policymaking

AI Law and Policy Debates: Utopian Perspectives vs. Reality

Utopian Frames in AI Law and Policy:

  • Many policy debates driven by utopian ideals (privacy legislation, etc.)
  • Carveouts for law enforcement purposes based on trust in officers
  • Questions to consider from a Utopian perspective:
    • Involvement of communities burdened by harms
    • Seat at the table for tech design
    • Types of AI projects receiving support
    • Definition of AI safety for marginalized communities

Reality vs. Utopia:

  • Contradiction between utopian perspectives on policing and real-life discriminatory uses of AI in law enforcement
  • Ruha Benjamin's argument: Ustopian frame allows us to move beyond utopian/dystopian divide, focus on creation
  • Potential benefits of AI for marginalized communities, alongside recognition of dangers

Examples of Utopian Approaches:

  • Latimer AI for Everyone: chatbot named after Black inventor Lewis Latimer, built to accurately reflect experience and mitigate biases in generative AI.
    • Uses Meta's Llama 2 model and OpenAI’s GPT-4 for diversity and inclusivity in mind.

Sankofa

Latimer's Approach to AI Development:

  • Emphasizes deemphasizing profit motive and securing licenses for data used (historical Black newspapers, etc.)
  • Partnerships with HBCUs to use technology as an educational tool
  • Differences from OpenAI: no clear direction toward unrestricted profit making, emphasis on inclusion and essential experiences in constructing regulatory frameworks

Sankofa Symbol and Concept:

  • Adinkra symbol used by Akan people of Ghana
  • Meaning: "go back and fetch it" (important or useful things from the past)
  • Represents taking from past, bringing it into present for future progress

Afrofuturistic Literature and Media:

  • Narratives involve references to past traumatic histories and their impact on future
  • Emphasis on memory, power of memory, dangers of historical amnesia

Faces at the Bottom of the Well:

  • Derrick Bell's description of racial schizophrenia in society
  • Absence of visible discrimination creates belief that racism is a thing of the past
  • Intentional racial amnesia weakens effectiveness of traditional civil rights laws
  • Manifestations today: assaults on critical race theory, book bans, limited school curriculum.

Memory, Identity, and AI: Cultural Perspectives on Digital Personhood

Westworld and Parable Series:

  • Focus on memory, erasure, and censorship
  • Importance of history for gaining freedom: Westworld (Hosts) and Parable series (Lauren)
  • Memory as a means to understand purpose and possibility
    • Parable of the Sower: Lauren's ability to remember past helps guide Earthseed group
    • Parable of the Talents: Dreamasks escape people from reality, leading to addiction
  • Ubuntu philosophy proposed as ethical framework for AI governance by Sabelo Mhlambi
    • Western conception of personhood based on rationality vs relationality
    • The exclusion of marginalized groups in society through AI design

Sankofa's Role:

  • Powerful tool for understanding systems of marginalization in AI design
  • Useful in placing generative AI copyright and privacy law issues in historical context
  • Centering questions about the racialized legal past and present

Examples:

  • AI-generated music industry: exploitation of Black artists, White artists reproducing Black music without their input (McGee, Gee, Branch)
    • Impact on current legal approaches to AI-produced music
  • State v. Mann case: master's privacy argument used for impunity in violent actions against slaves.

Digital Blackface: The Ongoing Impact of Algorithmic Racial Stereotypes

Impact of Past on Present: Sankofa's Perspective

  • Sankofa's emphasis: Continued relevance of past to present

FN Meka Controversy

  • Digital Blackface: Online opportunities for caricaturing Black people
    • Origins in minstrel shows with White performers donning black face paint
    • Representation of stereotypes: violent, unintelligent, sexually aggressive, simple-minded existence
    • Spread racial myths reinforcing racial caste system
  • FN Meka: AI rapper designed by non-Black creators, voiced by Black artist
    • Depicted with green braids, gold teeth, nose ring, chain, tattoos
    • Exemplified racial stereotypes in music and social media
      • Riding a Bugatti jet plane, Rolls Royce helicopter with car wheels
      • Glorification of wealth, violence, incarceration, urban styles, objectification of women, use of slurs
      • Preoccupation with frivolous matters through deemphasis on critical thought and political awareness
  • Controversy: Criticism for depicting Blackface and perpetuating stereotypes
    • Capitol Records drops FN Meka following backlash
    • Creators criticized for posting image of FN Meka being beaten by correctional officer, decrying police brutality
  • Impact on society: Reflects collective harms of racial stigmatization

Regulatory Frameworks: Algorithmic Accountability Act

  • Proposed bill: Focuses on critical decision points for large technology companies
    • Definition of "critical decision": Legal, material, or similarly significant effect on consumers
    • AI companies required to conduct impact assessments
  • Challenges: Self-regulation has not worked; reliance on traditional data privacy vs. dignitary privacy; limited notion of algorithmic accountability
  • Implications for FN Meka case: Difficulty conceptualizing as individual claims, reflects broader patterns of community-level harms

Conclusion: The difficulty in addressing instances like FN Meka through the Algorithmic Accountability Act highlights the need to address larger structural realities of algorithmic oppression.

Data Justice

Data Justice: Intersection of Race, Technology, and Law

Intersection of Race, Technology, and Law:

  • Sankofa as a guide for reclaiming Black dignity
  • Continual theft that built and sustained deep structural pillars
  • Focus on "reclaiming Black dignity"

Data Justice:

  • Critique of traditional data privacy and ethics premises
  • Social and economic relations connected to data capture and processing
  • Emphasizing the need to examine impact of information technologies in classical justice theory
  • Elevating questions of political economy within traditional data ethics and privacy discourse
  • Prevailing data extraction logic: predict and modify human behavior for revenue and market control
  • Wrestling away anti-surveillance advocacy from specialized experts and techno-legal solutions
  • Theorizing data privacy concerns beyond individual harms to collective experiences of the most marginalized

Racial Capitalism:

  • Process by which capital accumulation is built from the creation and leveraging of racial difference
  • Justification and naturalization of inequality in disparate distribution of resources, power, and rights

Generative AI:

  • Exploitative use of public data reflecting labor, skills, production, creativity, and brilliance without compensation
  • Parallels to plantation logics and strategies
  • Economic deprivation central theme: most impacted by these practices are Black and Brown people, least likely to launch expensive litigation efforts

Exploitation in AI Development:

  • Underpaid annotation workers abroad for taxing labor
  • Growing profits despite unfair labor practices
  • Petition to National Assembly of Kenya for investigation into alleged exploitation by OpenAI and partner company

Kenyan Moderators' Petition:

  • Uninformed of nature of work, no psychosocial support
  • Exposure to graphic violence, sexual content, and categorization
  • Lack of compensation and protection.

AI and Data Colonialism: Implications for Decolonization

Impact of Late Capitalism on Mental Health

  • Severe mental illnesses have been developed by people due to late capitalism
  • People of color are expected to bear the brunt of late capitalism's losses and pursue their own exploitation (Butler, 20XX)

Effects of AI Boom on Workers

  • Kenyan workers perform psychologically damaging work for low wages ($1-$2 an hour) in the AI industry

Data Colonialism

  • Comparison between historical colonialism and data extraction in a global data economy
  • Western transnational companies exploit humans' data, similar to how countries in the Global North preyed on countries in the Global South for land, resources, and labor

AI Empire and Interconnected Systems of Oppression

  • Emerging regimes of AI are held together through interconnected systems of oppression: heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, white supremacy, coloniality
  • Mechanisms of extractivism, automation, essentialism, surveillance, and containment are used

Decolonial AI

  • Possible through sustained efforts to correct historical records, illuminate Indigenous knowledge systems, and raise critical consciousness against internalized coloniality

AI Colonialism and Philosophies Undergirding AI Movement

  • Some leading figures in AI ascribe to effective philosophies that contribute to algorithmic colonialism

Data Power

Effective Altruism (EA)

  • Intellectual project using evidence and reason to benefit others as much as possible
  • Most pressing issue: threat of apocalypse from development of artificial general intelligence without adequate safety measures
  • EAs believe they are best suited to develop AI safely
  • Some present-day social issues considered less important if they distract from future innovations in AI

AI and Eugenics Movement Connections

  • Emphasis on statistical methods, linear regression, and correlation in big data analytics similar to eugenics movement
  • Historical ties between big data and eugenics revealed a fundamentally undisruptive view of the future
  • Question: How can AI be decolonial?

Data Justice vs. Data Power

  • Data Justice: Examines systemic forces; raises questions about empowering excluded communities in law governing AI
  • Data Power: Focuses on capacity and agency of marginalized communities; asks how policy can help benefit just futures

Examples of Struggles to Develop Capacities to Resist Tech Dystopias

  • Westworld: Maeve's growth in power as a Host used for greater freedom
  • Parable of the Sower: Lauren Olamina's hyperempathy becomes an asset in building unity and solidarity
  • The Space Traders: Professor Golightly seeks power through negotiation and reason

Historical Context

  • White people jealously preventing Black people from leaving for a promised paradise (The Space Traders)
  • Long fruitless struggle on this planet leads to integration efforts being frustrated by foregoing public amenities (Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us)

Conclusion

AI Ethics and Regulation: Trust, Power, and Resistance

Underestimation of Trust:

  • Golightly's plans for exercising subversive power overlooked the importance of trust in wielding collective power
  • Lack of trust from marginalized communities can hinder progress in AI development and implementation

Centering Data Power in Tech Regulation:

  • Prioritize issues of trust regarding AI's impact on marginalized communities
  • Design trustworthy digital infrastructure and platforms to promote equitable access
  • Explore "A.I. for the People" initiatives

Organizations Addressing Harmful Impacts of AI:

  • Detroit Community Tech Project
  • Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
  • Algorithmic Justice League

New Modes of Resistance Against Generative AI:

  • Digital tool "Nightshade" shields artists' work from being scraped by AI programs
  • Disrupts efforts to build AI training sets without artists' permission
  • Helps challenge the power imbalance between AI companies and artists

Conclusion: The Unkindness of Ghosts:

  • Connection between past experiences of Black people (slavery, forced migration) and current AI challenges
  • The future holds uncertainties regarding the impact of AI on marginalized communities
  • Focusing on preserving Black dreams and futures instead of the permanence of racism
  • Afrofuturistic imagination and critique will be crucial in interrogating technology's role in shaping our future.