Great AI divides? Automated decision-making technologies and dreams of development

ABSTRACT

A growing body of scholarship is combining studies of automated decision-making’s potential to alleviate challenges of development with critical perspectives on discourses and deployment of technologies in developing contexts. This article builds on this literature by drawing links between ‘dreams of development’ and the imaginings and aspirations surrounding automated decision making in the Global South. The article explores how three classic development imaginaries are reframed, altered and ultimately reinforced by policy recommendations at the global level by the World Bank: alleviating poverty and the creation of wealth, good governance, and social inclusion. We bring into sharper focus the interplay between international narratives about the emancipatory potential of AI and unpack co-created moral discourses around the responsibility over the provision, use and consequences of automated decision-making technologies. Themes of intentionality and the uptake of AI technologies become even more contentious in the Global South, where populations have arguably been subject to consecutive projects described as development, which have resulted in further entrenchment of systemic inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• automated decision-making
• development
• World Bank
• inequality
• social change

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Special Issue editors and reviewers, the Socio-Tech Futures Lab in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney and to the Intelligence in Singapore Society module students at Tembusu College for constructive discussion in developing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jolynna Sinanan

Jolynna Sinanan is a Research Fellow in Automated Decision-Making and Global Contexts in the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision-Making and Society and the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia.

Tom McNamara

Thomas McNamara is a Lecturer in Development Studies and the Deputy Director of the Master of International Development at La Trobe University, Australia. He holds an FNRS mandate (N.34785392) at the University of Liege, Belgium.