AI, agency, and power geometries

Abstract

One of the paradoxes of AI is that it is a global phenomenon, but it is always situated in specific local contexts and cultures. While approaches that aim to study local cultures of AI are important, there is the risk of neglecting their insertion within the broader geographies and politics of AI. As a response to this challenge, this article proposes a pathway to apply the concept of power geometries, originally proposed by feminist geographer Doreen Massey, to the case of AI. Reframing the global dimension of AI in terms of power geometries helps locate these positions in the complex networks of relationships between different actors at the global level. The power geometries of AI follow the lines and inequalities of the relationships between Global North and Global South, between colonizers and colonized, but also between diverse actors at different scales, such as governments, policymakers, corporations, designers, workers, and users. While all media can be examined in terms of power geometries, the power geometries of AI bring the issue of agency to the central stage. The reconfiguration of the question of agency sparked by AI, in fact, has generated new kinds of structures and trajectories underpinning AI’s power geometries.

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