Alex’s Reviews > Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence > Status Update

Data, in the world of AI, is presented as something neutral, unbiased. This however is not the case: already in the 1980's datasets were created using sets of data, without questioning whether or not the data 'mining' (personal data now being seen as a natural resource) was ethical or not, whether or not it harmed a specific group in the way it was presented.

This chapter was about labour, and time-keeping. We've seen how AI is used in a Fordian sort of way closely watching the time expended by the workers, in order to make production more effective. A Panopticon of sorts, if you will.

Or an Amazon warehouse.

An introduction to the concept of the Potemkin-village and the Panopticon. Both have a certain relation to Gen-AI. The Panopticon because both that and AI are ways to keep an eye on a multitude of workers and/or prisoners by extending the least amount of labour.
The Potemkin-village (colloquially known as an "image d'Épinal" in French) because everything is a facade and covering the labour of actual people.

"When a company introduces a new AI platform, workers are rarely allowed to opt out. This is less of a collaboration than a forced engagement, where workers are expected to re-skill, keep up, and unquestioningly accept each new technical development."

I think that's important to keep in mind.

"The tech sector heavily publicizes its environmental policies, sustainability initiatives, and plans to address climate-related problems using AI as a problem-solving tool. It is all part of a highly produced public image of a sustainable tech industry with no carbon emissions. In reality, it takes a gargantuan amount of enery(...)"
Oh, so it's not even an original idea.