Assistive AI devices function as nodes of unseen power over their users
Evidence
This eerie show of solidarity between competing AI devices concentrated my mind on the pressing question we often forget to ask: what exactly is a device like Alexa? What does it actually do? If you ask Alexa, it will tell you it is a home-based virtual assistant technology, ready to accept your commands – to switch on the lights, order more milk, take down a note, call a friend, search the internet, tell jokes – to be, in short, your dedicated, eager mechanical servant. … All true. Except that Alexa will never, ever tell you what it truly is: a tiny cog in a vast cloud-based network of power within which you are a mere node, a speck of digital dust, at best a plaything of forces beyond your comprehension or control. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 268
Categorization
- DEFINE: Sets up the core redefinition of the ‘assistant’ as an instrument of a cloud-based network of power.
- XREF: connects to: Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 489; Power functions automatically when subjects believe they are always visible — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 313; Automation requires active human work to organize the relinquishing of subjectivity — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 650
Broader Connections
- Power functions automatically when subjects believe they are always visible
#corroborates(0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 313 - Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood
#expands(0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 489 - Automation requires active human work to organize the relinquishing of subjectivity
#complicates(0.72) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 650