Pattern Discrimination

2019
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Authors:

Clemens Apprich, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Florian Cramer, and Hito Steyerl

How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them?

Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation—in a digital world, identity politics is pattern discrimination. It is by recognizing patterns in input data that artificial intelligence algorithms create bias and practice racial exclusions thereby inscribing power relations into media. How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs?

How are we to contend with the many forms of pattern discrimination in contemporary life? This book shows the complexity of the terrain and reminds us what is at stake.

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Kate Crawford, AI Now Institute NYU

3 Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Simon Fraser University. She is the author of Update to Remain the Same: Habitual New MediaDuty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil WarWhat Is Post-DigitalTechnotopia: A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures

How are we to contend with the many forms of pattern discrimination in contemporary life? This book shows the complexity of the terrain and reminds us what is at stake.

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Kate Crawford, AI Now Institute NYU

Profound and provocative, this book demonstrates the enduring relevance of theory to contemporary digital dilemmas. Addressing platform capitalism, democratic decay, and the future of labor and play, the authors illuminate the alien intelligence of big data, pattern recognition, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

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Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland