The artificial enthusiasm reading list
When we created our working group on Digital Ethics, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were meeting in parks to discuss resilience vs. resistance and speculate about "the new world" that would emerge from the crisis. Suddenly, everyone was future-oriented, and possibilites seemed wide open. Five years later, the task of imagining the future has been almost entirely taken over, in mediatic and public spheres, by discourse around what is known as "artificial intelligence". Not a day goes by without pressure to adopt, adapt and conform to what is presented as the new paradigm — nor, on the other hand, without calls for us to realise that doom is near and that "nothing will ever be the same", which is not that different in the end.
Our Working Group itself is torn on this issue. Is it worth dedicating time and energy to debunking the hype around so-called "AI" and trying to imagine benevolent modes for it, or are these over-marketed apps pushed by reckless corporate interests simply distracting us from focusing on truly building a just and sustainable future for the cultural sector and, more generally, for the living world? At the time of writing, our proposal looks like a compromise: explore our doubts related to "artificial intelligence" as a method for better questioning our entire relationship to tech and to extractive, unsustainable modes of operating. And continue to build alliances and collective practices around our doubts and critical stances, as a way of thinking about a present and a future whose parameters and possibilities remain open for us to define. We have a new publication coming out soon about this. In the meantime, here are some resources that have been useful to our work in the past few years.
- Lucy Perineau, coordinator of the ENCC Digital Ethics Working group, March 2025
History of so-called "AI"
"8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story" Steven Levy, Wired, March 2024 read here
Privacy
"Modern AI and the end of privacy" Lionel Dricot, February 2023 read here
General issues
The internet as ruined space, and how to reclaim digital commons: "Can Democracy Survive Online?" Robert Gorwa, Jacobin, December 2024 read here
"Drowning in AI Generated Garbage: the silent war we are fighting" Lionel Dricot, May 2022 read here
"Zoom CEO wants AI clones to attend boring meetings" Times of India Tech Desk, June 2024 read here
Data and surveillance, migration, borders, militarisation of tech
A reader about "the involvement of the computer industry in organised violence at borders and in occupied territories": "Complicit Chips" TITiPI, October 2024 read here
A list of digital "alternatives to services provided by companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine": "Infraresistance", TITiPI, March 2024 read here
UK Home Office as case study, part 1: “UK to surveil convicted migrants with facial recognition“ Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Computer Weekly, August 2022 read here
UK Home Office as case study, part 2: “Ankle tags and 24/7 surveillance – this is how the UK treats new migrants“ Janet Farrell, The Guardian, August 2022 read here
UK Home Office as case study, part 3: “ICO finds the Home Office’s pilot of GPS electronic monitoring of migrants breached UK data protection law” Information Commissioner’s Office, March 2024 read here
Environmental issues, water, and energy use
"The Environmental Impacts of AI -- Primer" Sasha Luccioni, Bruna Trevelin, Margaret Mitchell, Hugging Face, September 2024 read here
"The current AI boom has the world's tech giants building big data centers across the world. We all know they need a lot of energy. But what about water? The two are very closely tied together. A datacenter with 15 megawatts of IT capacity is estimated to use about 80-130 million gallons of water each year. That is as much water as three hospitals.": "The Big Data Center Water Problem", Jon Y, November 2024 read here
Guide on measuring the ecological impac of AI in an industry-friendly way visit here
Energy consumption and environmental impact tracking tool for developers visit here
"Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of commercial AI products based on generative, multi-purpose AI systems promising a unified approach to building machine learning (ML) models into technology. However, this ambition of ``generality'' comes at a steep cost to the environment, given the amount of energy these systems require and the amount of carbon that they emit.": "Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?" Alexandra Sasha Luccioni, Yacine Jernite, Emma Strubell, October 2024 read here
Former Google CEO speaks about unsustainable resource use by tech (could also go in "comic relief" section), October 2024 read here
Philosophical and legal perspectives
A professor of law reacts to the European Commission position on AI in 2020 - still very relevant today: ""Adopt AI, think later". The Coué method to the rescue of artificial intelligence.", Antoinette Rouvray, February 2020 read here
Tension with authors' rights
How debates on author's rights vs. machine rights could redefine conceptions of professional vs amateur art practices: "Style and revenge: the vagaries of the artistic class in generative AI" Nicolas Malevé, October 2024 read here
Collective practices around tech
"Infrastructural anecdotes" TITiPI, January 2023 read here
Recommendations for organisations
Statement on Ethical Web Principles by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international public-interest non-profit organisation founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee read here
“Les grands défis de l’IA generative” (French only) Data for Good, July 2023 read here
More on Data for Good and its publications read here
The AI Now Institute carries out diagnosis and actionable policy research on artificial intelligence. A lot to read here for those who believe in reforming and limiting the impacts of AI visit here
European Alternatives: a company and website that helps identify "European alternatives for digital service and products" visit here
Corporate positions on ethics and AI
“Vimeo’s position on AI” Philip Moyer, May 2024 read here
The AI financial bubble
“When Will the GenAI Bubble Burst?” Gary Marcus, March 2024 read here
Good round-up on issues around AI and its uncertain future (French only): "Une bulle d’intelligence artificielle et de stupidité naturelle" Lionel Dricot, April 2024 read here
Deep doom from tech whistleblowers and others
“Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead” Leopold Aschenbrenner, June 2024 read here
“AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions Peter S. Park, Simon Goldstein, Aidan O’Gara, Michael Chen, Dan Hendrycks, May 2024 read here
Flavien Chervet on why AI optimism is not helping us prepare for the future (French only) read here
Comic relief