CIES, in collaboration with ICS (LIFE and SHIFT research groups), the Urban Transition Hub, and the APS thematic section “Knowledge, Science and Technology”, will host a seminar on artificial intelligence on 18 March, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., entitled “Necro-extractivism: Algorithmic Warfare, ‘Kill Clouds’, and the Racial Political Economy of Security Imperialism.”
The seminar will feature Norma Möllers (Queen’s University) as the invited speaker and will be held in a hybrid format. The session will also include contributions from Nina Amelung, researcher at CIES-Iscte, and Miguel Duarte, from Iscte.
VENUE
Room 3, ICS
LINK TEAMS
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/32511917312744?p=khzE6ELCZHv9v13XnV
ABSTRACT
In this talk, I will discuss a project which I am currently preparing with colleagues from Canada and the US. This project proposes to examine machine learning technologies which are given license to mark persons or places for destruction in the context of war and/or execute the destruction of persons or places so marked. Two problems motivate our research questions.
First, because AI requires vast amounts of domain specific data to train models, it is possible that AI weapons are being trained on populations in current war zones, raising questions about the economic value of violence for the AI industry. Furthermore, it is not clear that these systems can reliably distinguish between ‘civilians’ and ‘combatants’, calling into question their ability to comply with International Humanitarian Law. Second, these technologies require vast computing capabilities, so-called “kill clouds”, which have in some cases been outsourced to Big Tech because they outstrip state-controlled computing capabilities. AI weapons’ reliance on vast computational infrastructures thus raises questions about the geopolitical power of Big Tech in the global AI weapons race. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and theories of racial capitalism, the project will analyze the racial political economy of algorithmic warfare, and the implications of global AI armament for changing geopolitical relations.
The overarching theoretical aim is to conceptualize what we call ‘necro-extractivism’: how war benefits digital racial capitalism. In the context of new global fascist formations, a crumbling international order, the specter of a new world war, and the fact that automated weapons are virtually unregulated, it is urgent to understand the global entanglements between war and the AI industry to work towards demilitarization. Ultimately, supporting ongoing work towards demilitarization is the societal goal of this project, and we will contribute towards it by providing actionable data and analyses to the public, and by organizing three knowledge mobilization workshops with abolitionist and tech worker activists who are organizing for an international ban of automated weapons systems.
