{"title":"The next big thing – artificial intelligence","authors":"P. Ahluwalia, Toby Miller","doi":"10.1080/13504630.2023.2236372","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Next Big Thing has arrived – artificial intelligence (AI). But there is nothing new about AI – it has been part of everything from credit checks to customer ordering to citizen surveillance for a long time. For example, AI first ‘wrote’ a sports story in 2009, which became a model for the machinery’s extension into other culture industries (Brambilla Hall, 2018). The Los Angeles Times has had a Quakebot since 2014 that connects instantly to the newsroom with a story when a serious tremor is sensed in the Southland by the nation’s Geological Survey. Following a quick check of this draft by the human on duty, the story is published. Information on the system is catalogued under ‘people’ by the paper. There are utopic and dystopic components to the discourse of artificial intelligence. It is seen as a force disrupting the clientelismo that has dogged much of the world. Large sets of machine-collated and -sifted data have exposed international ruling-class concealment of wealth and influence, sorting different forms of oligarchic malfeasance so reporters can make sense of them (Broussard, 2018, pp. 44–46). There is a grand future for such work. Interlocking directorates and oligarchical tendencies mean that Colombia, for example, is normally run by politicians with significant media interests. The prospect of instant, unedited, on-line access to their activity has excited many (Montaña, 2014). In Brazil, Aos Fatos used the bot Fátima to counter fascist lies during the 2022 Presidential election, and some journalists find automated fact-checking improves their work experience (Johnson, 2023; Manfredi Sánchez & Ufarte-Ruiz, 2020). It is also claimed that AI can prevent mass violence by alerting activists and authorities in ‘real time’ to its occurrence and establishing whether the testimony of eyewitnesses is part of a pattern (Yankoski et al., 2021). The World Economic Forum and Reuters even see AI as a key riposte to climate change (Neslen, 2021). UN agencies collude in these unsubstantiated claims via ‘AI for the Planet’. Needless to say, public relations agencies have been major players in this mythology, planting stories around the globe (Bourne, 2019). Meanwhile, AI agents have untold negative impacts on the climate, thanks to their gigantic carbon footprints (Heikkilä, 2022; Jones, 2018; Lacoste et al., 2019; Strubell et al., 2019). More prosaically than the idea of salvation from climate change, Bayerischer Rundfunk deploys the machinery to moderate online comments. The Associated Press generates shot lists to organize a bibliography of its video holdings (‘Artificial Intelligence is Remixing’, 2023). Such uses of the technology may appear quite mundane, but they have serious implications for the quality of work and the labor process alike. For example, Dataminr®’s ‘AI for Modern Newsrooms’ is favored by more than 650 news desks worldwide. It promises ‘the earliest possible indications of breaking news’, ensuring journalists will ‘gain an edge in covering the stories that matter most to their audiences’. Al Jazeera, CNN, DW, the Daily Mail, and the Washington Post are listed as satisfied customers. The system works like this: the company investigates algorithmically the dark and deep webs, ‘social’ media, blogs, sensors attuned to the internet of things, and digital audio. Alerts from these sources provide virtually instantaneous information to subscribers, based on their thematic and geographical desires. This is","PeriodicalId":46853,"journal":{"name":"Social Identities","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Identities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2236372","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHNIC STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The Next Big Thing has arrived – artificial intelligence (AI). But there is nothing new about AI – it has been part of everything from credit checks to customer ordering to citizen surveillance for a long time. For example, AI first ‘wrote’ a sports story in 2009, which became a model for the machinery’s extension into other culture industries (Brambilla Hall, 2018). The Los Angeles Times has had a Quakebot since 2014 that connects instantly to the newsroom with a story when a serious tremor is sensed in the Southland by the nation’s Geological Survey. Following a quick check of this draft by the human on duty, the story is published. Information on the system is catalogued under ‘people’ by the paper. There are utopic and dystopic components to the discourse of artificial intelligence. It is seen as a force disrupting the clientelismo that has dogged much of the world. Large sets of machine-collated and -sifted data have exposed international ruling-class concealment of wealth and influence, sorting different forms of oligarchic malfeasance so reporters can make sense of them (Broussard, 2018, pp. 44–46). There is a grand future for such work. Interlocking directorates and oligarchical tendencies mean that Colombia, for example, is normally run by politicians with significant media interests. The prospect of instant, unedited, on-line access to their activity has excited many (Montaña, 2014). In Brazil, Aos Fatos used the bot Fátima to counter fascist lies during the 2022 Presidential election, and some journalists find automated fact-checking improves their work experience (Johnson, 2023; Manfredi Sánchez & Ufarte-Ruiz, 2020). It is also claimed that AI can prevent mass violence by alerting activists and authorities in ‘real time’ to its occurrence and establishing whether the testimony of eyewitnesses is part of a pattern (Yankoski et al., 2021). The World Economic Forum and Reuters even see AI as a key riposte to climate change (Neslen, 2021). UN agencies collude in these unsubstantiated claims via ‘AI for the Planet’. Needless to say, public relations agencies have been major players in this mythology, planting stories around the globe (Bourne, 2019). Meanwhile, AI agents have untold negative impacts on the climate, thanks to their gigantic carbon footprints (Heikkilä, 2022; Jones, 2018; Lacoste et al., 2019; Strubell et al., 2019). More prosaically than the idea of salvation from climate change, Bayerischer Rundfunk deploys the machinery to moderate online comments. The Associated Press generates shot lists to organize a bibliography of its video holdings (‘Artificial Intelligence is Remixing’, 2023). Such uses of the technology may appear quite mundane, but they have serious implications for the quality of work and the labor process alike. For example, Dataminr®’s ‘AI for Modern Newsrooms’ is favored by more than 650 news desks worldwide. It promises ‘the earliest possible indications of breaking news’, ensuring journalists will ‘gain an edge in covering the stories that matter most to their audiences’. Al Jazeera, CNN, DW, the Daily Mail, and the Washington Post are listed as satisfied customers. The system works like this: the company investigates algorithmically the dark and deep webs, ‘social’ media, blogs, sensors attuned to the internet of things, and digital audio. Alerts from these sources provide virtually instantaneous information to subscribers, based on their thematic and geographical desires. This is
下一件大事已经到来——人工智能。但人工智能并不是什么新鲜事——很长一段时间以来,它一直是从信用检查到客户订单再到公民监控的一切的一部分。例如,人工智能在2009年首次“写”了一个体育故事,成为该机器向其他文化产业延伸的典范(Brambilla Hall,2018)。自2014年以来,《洛杉矶时报》一直有一个Quakebot,当美国地质调查局在南部地区感应到严重地震时,它会立即与新闻编辑室相连。在值班人员快速检查了这份草稿后,故事发表了。该报将有关该系统的信息编目在“人”下。人工智能的话语有乌托邦的成分,也有反乌托邦的成分。它被视为一股扰乱困扰世界大部分地区的客户主义的力量。大量机器整理和筛选的数据暴露了国际统治阶级对财富和影响力的隐瞒,对不同形式的寡头渎职行为进行了分类,以便记者能够理解它们(Broussard,2018,第44–46页)。这样的工作前景广阔。相互关联的董事会和寡头政治倾向意味着,例如,哥伦比亚通常由具有重大媒体利益的政客管理。即时、未经编辑的在线访问他们的活动的前景让许多人感到兴奋(Montaña,2014)。在巴西,奥斯·法托斯在2022年总统选举期间使用机器人Fátima来对抗法西斯谎言,一些记者发现自动事实核查可以改善他们的工作体验(Johnson,2023;Manfredi Sánchez和Ufarte Ruiz,2020)。据称,人工智能可以通过“实时”提醒活动人士和当局注意大规模暴力的发生,并确定目击者的证词是否是一种模式的一部分来防止大规模暴力(Yankoski等人,2021)。世界经济论坛和路透社甚至将人工智能视为应对气候变化的关键手段(Neslen,2021)。联合国机构通过“AI for the Planet”串通这些未经证实的说法。不用说,公共关系机构一直是这个神话的主要参与者,在全球范围内传播故事(Bourne,2019)。与此同时,人工智能代理由于其巨大的碳足迹,对气候产生了不可估量的负面影响(Heikkilä,2022;Jones,2018;Lacoste等人,2019;Strubell等人,2019)。与拯救气候变化的想法相比,Bayerischer Rundfunk更为平淡的是,他部署了这一机制来缓和网上评论。美联社生成拍摄列表,以组织其视频收藏的参考书目(“人工智能正在重组”,2023)。这种技术的使用可能看起来很普通,但它们对工作质量和劳动过程都有严重影响。例如,Dataminr®的“现代新闻室人工智能”受到全球650多家新闻台的青睐。它承诺“尽早发现突发新闻”,确保记者“在报道对观众最重要的故事方面占据优势”。半岛电视台、美国有线电视新闻网、德国之声、《每日邮报》和《华盛顿邮报》被列为满意客户。该系统的工作原理是这样的:该公司通过算法调查黑暗和深层的网络、“社交”媒体、博客、与物联网的传感器和数字音频。来自这些来源的警报根据用户的主题和地理需求,向用户提供几乎即时的信息。这是
期刊介绍:
Recent years have witnessed considerable worldwide changes concerning social identities such as race, nation and ethnicity, as well as the emergence of new forms of racism and nationalism as discriminatory exclusions. Social Identities aims to furnish an interdisciplinary and international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities. The journal is especially concerned to address these issues in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions. Social Identities is intended as a forum for contesting ideas and debates concerning the formations of, and transformations in, socially significant identities, their attendant forms of material exclusion and power.