AI is just "outsourcing," ethical Mars rovers, fireside chats, and more ...
Hello Opt Out travellers,
Did you hear the one about the U.S. grocery stores with fancy automated checkouts --that were actually staffed by people in India? In another lose-lose for our current AI obsession, Amazon backtracked on their Just Walk Out storefronts as it was revealed they weren't too automated after all.
I've written about this phenomenon a few times in scholarly journals--like my article about how to spot "pre-automation," when a tech company uses "gig" work to build a platform monopoly. But this week I got so frustrated with our misguided discourse about AI that I wrote this piece, for Tech Policy Press:
Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux
If it resonates with you please share widely!
AI is not destined to be this problematic, though. In the fall I wrote a piece for The Conversation called NASA’s Mars rovers could inspire a more ethical future for AI. It's a good a reminder that I'm not anti-technology at all. I just think we could be building these tools in a much better way: to bring us together, instead of tear us apart.
On that note, if you enjoy thinking about the Big Picture when it comes to technology and society, check out my "fireside chat" with my brilliant colleagues danah boyd and Tressie Macmillan Cottom at the Knight Foundation's INFORMED conference this spring. We share our ideas about how, as social scientists, we think about the entanglement of new technologies, relationships, and institutions, and suggest how we should address societal problems with technology moving forward.
In other Opt Out news, I spent this winter experimenting with a couple of offline handheld game emulators, and am now happily playing classic video games on a Gameboy emulator using a Raspberry Pi. I'll share more about this in coming posts, along with alternatives to Chromebooks, Apple, and Microsoft products when it comes to your next laptop (hint: my personal lineup includes Starlabs, Framework, and System76).
Expect posts on these and other Opt Out developments in the coming weeks. In the meanwhile, hang in there, keep resisting, and make sure you know where your data is!
PS. I'm still available at @cyberlyra@hachyderm.io on Mastodon, for those of you who are on the Fediverse.