This essay has now been published in Critical AI at this link. [https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-10734026]; the abstract is pasted in below. If your institution lacks access to Critical AI please encourage them to subscribe. If you are an independent scholar please write to criticalai@sas.rutgers.edu.
ABSTRACT:
This introductory article calls attention to the shift from the “big data” discourse of the 2000s to the current focus on “AI” in its supposedly “responsible” and “human-centered” forms. Such rhetoric helps deflect attention from the profitable and surveillant accumulation of data and the worrisome concentration of power in a handful of companies. Alert to this problematic political economy, the issue’s editors engage recent theories of data capitalism and argue that attention to processes of datafication helps to elude the pitfalls of data positivism, data universalism, and unintentional criti-hype. As the authors touch upon each contribution to this special issue, they call for critical AI studies to forge an interdisciplinary community of practice, alert to ontological commitments, design justice principles, and spaces of dissensus.