Description
Book SynopsisYarden Katz reveals the ideology embedded in the concept of artificial intelligence, contending that it both serves and mimics the logic of white supremacy. Only by seeing the connection between artificial intelligence and whiteness can we prioritize alternatives to the conception of AI as an all-encompassing technological force.
Trade ReviewIn this timely, compelling, persuasive, and eye-opening book, Yarden Katz makes profound contributions to knowledge at the intersections of technology, philosophy, and critical race theory.
Artificial Whiteness exposes artificial intelligence (AI) as a malleable technology of power rooted in raced, classed, and gendered models of the self. Katz reveals how the artifice of whiteness provides the organizing logic of AI and enables its racist and capitalist ideological projects to be disguised as socially neutral technological imperatives. -- George Lipsitz, author of
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity PoliticsIn
Artificial Whiteness, Yarden Katz takes a deep dive into the history of artificial intelligence in order to reveal its enduring connections not only to the military-industrial complex but also to white supremacy itself. Katz sounds a chilling warning about how amorphous and future-oriented domains of knowledge production like AI—perhaps especially when abetted by the modern university’s false claims to both neutrality and benevolence—are able to be hidden from public scrutiny while they produce inequality, violence, and catastrophe in our world. A unique and fascinating study. -- Britt Rusert, author of
Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American CultureFor the technology worker, the netizen, and the poet who wishes to tear into the handiwork of empire, here is a book that will dispel the illusions cast by artificial intelligence. Katz demystifies a field built on self-mystification. AI is a nebulous technology, a morally ambivalent discourse, and at its core, a political-military-scientific program, which, like whiteness, masquerades as universal and all-seeing when it is in fact deeply invested in race, gender, and colonialism. -- la paperson, author of
A Third University Is PossibleThis is a book about how white supremacy can be found at the roots of artificial intelligence, an ongoing influence confirmed by links between AI startups and white supremacists. -- Khari Johnson * Venturebeat *
The dialog this book introduces is one worth having; I recommend the read. * College and Research Libraries *
Provides a useful frame for understanding both the historical arc of white domination under which we continue to suffer and the current wave of fascination with AI. * Public Books *
[A] frontal assault on the flexible and nefarious association between whiteness and artificial intelligence...Highly recommended. * Choice *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
Part I: Formation1. In the Service of Empire
2. In the Service of Capital
Part II: Self and the Social Order3. Epistemic Forgeries and Ghosts in the Machine
4. Adaptation, Not Abolition: Critical AI Experts and Carceral-Positive Logic
5. Artificial Whiteness
Part III: Alternatives6. Dissenting Visions: From Autopoietic Love to Embodied War
7. A Generative Refusal
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
