Yarden Katz. Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2020. 352p. Paperback, $28.00 (ISBN: 9780231194907).

Abstract

In Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence, Yarden Katz encourages the reader to step away from discourse that frames Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a purely technological development. Instead, the reader is guided through AI’s epistemological roots, the espoused values and priorities of its progenitors, its sources of research funding, and the marriage among academia, industry, and the American military that birthed it. By providing this context, Katz is able to more thoroughly examine and interrogate AI’s principal service to structural white supremacy and imperialism, as well as how that service has been masked by a “progressive veneer” in recent years.