Abstract: The questions asking whether it is possible to decolonize AI (Adams, 2021; Mohamed et al., 2020) or if feminist AI is an oxymoron, result from the understanding of sociotechnical systems as intrinsically political (Winner, 1986). Moreover, if AI is political and reflects the economic, social, and cultural conditions in which it emerges, a feminist and decolonial AI should address the systemic and structural conditions that make AI, in its current hegemonic form, a tool for reinforcing local and global asymmetries. Drawing from feminist and decolonial epistemologies, we challenge the basic assumptions about how, where, for what, why, and by whom technologies are built. In other words, how to address AI as a matter of power (Ricaurte, 2022b).

Bio: Paola Ricaurte is a full professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In 2020 she co-founded Tierra Común, a network of academics, practitioners, and activists interested in decolonizing data. She participates in several expert committees, such as the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), the Global Index on Responsible AI, the Expert Group for the Implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the AI Ethics Experts Without Borders network, and the Women for Ethical AI (W4EAI) platform. She is a member of the <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms and leads the Latin American and Caribbean hub of the Feminist AI Research Network, f<A+i>r, where she regionally coordinates the Incubating Feminist AI project. In addition to her academic work, she participates in civil society initiatives to promote digital rights, the development of public interest technologies, and the dissemination of the environmental impacts of technological development.

Abstract: Computational social science seeks insights into human interactions – online and offline – based on traces of our activity online. But whose online activity do we pay attention to? Researchers are increasingly sensitive to the biases in our work that decenter the Global Majority and can overfocus on use cases in WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societies. But we have other biases that need addressing, including a bias towards studying the most popular speech: the video that goes viral, the Twitter quip that shapes headlines.

A fuller understanding of how digital media is shaping our lives requires attention to the quotidian internet, the billions of digital objects created every day, all over the world, most of whom are seen by small audiences of family and friends, or no one at all. Studying the quotidian web is a technical challenge, as well as an ethical one – can we ethically study media that we were never expected to see – but offers a vastly richer picture of what people are making, sharing and encountering around the world. Studying quotidian media can recenter Global Majority uses of digital media, showing how people around the world are reinventing the tools of American and Chinese media monopolies for their own needs.

Bio: Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the use of new media technologies by activists and alternative business and governance models for the internet. He is the author of Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them (2021), Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2013) and co-author with Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci of “The Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media” forthcoming on MIT Press. With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices. It showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages, publishing editions in 20 languages. Previously, Zuckerman directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web’s first “personal publishing” sites. He and his family live in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts.