The politics of data, algorithms, and AI systems

Pascal D. Koenig ()

Chapter 3 in Understanding the Politics of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp 19-38 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Values and interests can become embedded in AI systems on the level of seemingly technical design choices. This chapter explains why the political nature of AI is already rooted at the level of the data needed to create AI systems and why the design of algorithms and AI models is never truly neutral as it necessarily requires decisions that involve value judgments. The chapter furthermore describes how the use of AI systems can have impacts on society that make these systems politically relevant, and that these effects are not pre-determined and depend on the concrete uses of the technology. This also means that AI does not per se support specific political interests. It does, however, contribute to a quantification of society and sustains a rational ordering which is particularly compatible with existing forms of exerting power in bureaucracy and in the economy.

Keywords: Politics of technology; Technology design; Data politics; Commensuration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035348015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035348022.0007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24006_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().