In Veröffentlichung
Abolitionist Intelligence: Learning to See Technology
Contemporary technology discourse around ethics and harm mitigation tends to fail to escape the epistemological and ideological framework it tries to critique, as it does not necessarily engage with the material conditions and the social implications of technology, especially from within the field of technology itself. This article proposes a distinct analysis and interpretation of emergent technologies, exemplified by contemporary artificial intelligence (AI), by applying existing historical knowledge and critique, but from an explicitly abolitionist and materialist as well as a primarily engineering-centric standpoint. It juxtaposes brief histories of the contemporary abolitionist movement and AI and then discusses three core aspects of today's proliferation of AI. This assessment shows possible starting points and sources for critical examination and strategies for constructing alternate modes of technological knowledge production and speculative engagement, highlighting the contingency of alternative forms of technology on distinctly different strategies, socio-political networks and approaches to knowledge production.