Exploitation Forensics – Vladan Joler (University of Novi Sad)

Exploitation Forensics is a collection of maps and documents created as a result of investigations conducted in the last few years by the Share Lab. The maps will help us explore the invisible layers of contemporary technological black boxes and their fractal supply chains, exposing various forms of hidden labor and the exploitation of material resources and data.

Anatomy of an AI System is a large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labor, data, and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo. The exploded view diagram combines and visualizes three central, extractive processes that are required to run a large-scale artificial intelligence system: material resources, human labor, and data. The map and essay consider these three elements across time—represented as a visual description of the birth, life, and death of a single Amazon Echo unit.
At this moment in the 21st century, we see a new form of extractivism that is well underway: one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being. Many of the assumptions about human life made by machine learning systems are narrow, normative, and laden with error. Yet they are inscribing and building those assumptions into a new world, and will increasingly play a role in how opportunities, wealth, and knowledge are distributed.
The stack that is required to interact with an Amazon Echo goes well beyond the multi-layered ‘technical stack’ of data modeling, hardware, servers, and networks. The full stack reaches much further into capital, labor, and nature, and demands an enormous amount of each. The true costs of these systems—social, environmental, economic, and political—remain hidden and may stay that way for some time.

https://anatomyof.ai/

Vladan Joler is SHARE Foundation co-founder and professor at the New Media department of the University of Novi Sad. He is leading SHARE Lab, a research and data investigation lab for exploring different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labour exploitation, invisible infrastructures, black boxes, and many other contemporary phenomena on the intersection between technology and society.

https://labs.rs
https://anatomyof.ai/
@TheCreaturesLab

Biweekly on Tuesdays – 6pm – AH 217/218