2023.Jun.27

REPORTS

Report on the 19th B’AI Book Club
Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora, Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures (2019)

On May 23, 2023, the 19th meeting of the B’AI Book Club, which is a book review session by project members of the B’AI Global Forum, was held. This time, Professor Yuko Itatsu introduced the book “Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures” (2019) by Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora.　

First, Prof. Itatsu summarized the contents of the book and then proceeded to the plenary discussion. The book was authored by American university professors Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora. With the current use of various types of robots, and especially with the advent of AI, the idea of technoliberalism, in which technology liberates humans in a new dimension, is gaining popularity. However, the authors state that we should be cautious about technoliberalism. The authors’ basic argument is that robots reinforce racial capitalism by operating as human surrogates in race and gender. These technological surrogates are at the expense of those who are deemed less than human, and such colonialist projects have become embedded in technology. The only solution lies in decolonizing intelligence.

The chapters of this book are divided into the following four themes: automation of work, appropriation of the socialist ethos of sharing artificial intelligence, emotion-enabled robots, and the autonomy of machines in wartime. The cases treated also range from factory robots and social robots to killer robots and sex robots. What these subjects have in common is that the relationship between man and machine is a recurring master-slave relationship, and that this surrogate human is blessed insofar as the machine is obedient to the man. The authors state that what is dominant with respect to the intelligence that uses these robotics and AI technologies is the logic of efficiency and rationality, and that there can be no feminist AI unless this is abandoned.

On the other hand, the authors also introduce practices that counter the dominant concepts. For example, there are feminist efforts to use technology for equity, such as 3D printing various types of gynecological health technology so that people can use it without having to pay for medical care. In addition, drone selfies show how, in a world where drones no longer have a reason to exist without war, they stop serving others to monitor them and begin to look at themselves.

Prof. Itatsu sees this book as an attempt to highlight the problems of Western civilization since the Enlightenment, rather than focusing on racial and algorithmic prejudice and the specific everyday experiences of those marginalized by it. However, she also raises questions such as how the paradigm of Western civilization can be changed, how the practice of resistance can be more than a critique of the status quo, and how the arguments in this book, which are based on the exploitation of others in labor by the Anglo-Saxons in the West, can be applied to practice in Japan.

In the plenary discussion, the question was first raised as to how the traditional discussion of the connection between intellectual rationality and masculinity and between the body and femininity is being redefined with the advent of AI, and whether overcoming dualism will lead to considering new aspects of AI use. In this regard, it was pointed out that robots have not only intelligence but also a physical aspect, and that the link between AI use and gender depends on the people who design them, but that men are currently the main designers. Furthermore, the difficulties of blurring the boundary between the oppressor and the oppressed when we use technology in various aspects, such as participation in social media, were discussed.

In addition, differences between countries were highlighted using the case of domestic work in Japan as an example. Based on the US case study, the book states that housework robots such as “Alfred” are making housework by racialized and gendered workers invisible, thus diminishing the value of the people doing the work. In Japan, however, the role of children in caregiving is sometimes considered too important for robots to be entrusted with care work, while on the other hand, there are aspects of the elderly population that prefer social robots. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the differences in situations by culture when applying the arguments in this book, but in any case, it is confirmed that robots are treated as neutral entities, erasing otherness in race, ethnicity, and gender.

Thus, while focusing on the US case, this book, which raises the issue of gendering and racial capitalism inherent in AI technology in a broad scope and advocates the need for intelligence that overcomes the logic of efficiency and rationality, should be read now that both the attractions and dangers of AI technology are being reported.