Timnit emphasizes the importance to understand and call things with more specificity as the nebulous and overarching term “AI” leads to not only confusion and overwhelm, it complicates discussions around its benefits and harms and has led to the evasion of responsibility and accountability. 

Some of us don't like the term "AI", for good reason. This term is inaccurate and misleading, as these systems are neither artificial nor intelligent. Instead, they operate through pattern recognition of vast datasets, relying heavily on human involvement for their creation, maintenance, and refinement. Unlike human intelligence, they lack the capacity for true originality or creativity, not to mention wisdom.

There is a prevailing narrative that AI is or will be capable of solving humanity's greatest challenges, from disease to climate change, presenting a benevolent facade of a “digital god”. However, the flipside of this narrative is that this “digital god” can also pose existential threats if controlled or developed by the "wrong hands."

This astute portrayal reveals a continuation of old power dynamics manifesting in new technologies, driven by profit motives and an insatiable desire for control. It positions a group of predominantly white men, often holding patriarchal, homophobic, racist, and eugenic ideologies, as the rightful developers and controllers of these technologies.  Who argue for less regulation and bureaucracy, and push for the construction of massive data centers that exploit workers and degrade the environment, often in the Global South and with little accountability.

So, of course, this is problematic! But we should not feel discouraged. Anasuya reminds us that as Feminists we are about contesting power and we should feel solidly grounded in the critique of power, even if the mythos is to make tech opaque and to make it hard for us to fully understand how it works, we know it’s all about power and know how to push back on that.

The future is not inevitable. We have agency and choice to shape it. While technology often creates challenges, it can also be used as part of the solution. for example using automations to flag graphic content and hate speech, or to support language accessibility and sovereignty. As Timnit emphasized, it’s important for us to support the visions and efforts of people who share our values and have the right intentions, while we also continue to be vigilant and push back against harmful practices and technologies.

We should also remember that creativity is a human endeavor and bust the hype that AI is creative. In a time where technology is so overreaching we should intentionally uplift human agency and human creativity, supporting artists directly and the folks that are fighting back in creative ways.

When it comes to developing new technologies, Anasuya invites us to ask ourselves: Who is this for? What are we trying to achieve? What kind of world do we want to build together? By answering these questions, we can reverse engineer our approach. Unlike big tech, we need to shift paradigms and prioritize technologies that serve marginalized communities, recognizing that these solutions can ultimately benefit the wider population and we can create a tapestry of smaller technologies that are task and context-specific with well curated data tailored to the unique needs of communities.