Algorithmic Necropolitics

Abstract

This chapter of the author’s 2022 book Racismo algorítmico: inteligência artificial e discriminação nas redes digitais (Algorithmic racism: artificial intelligence and discrimination in digital networks) demonstrates the racism encoded in artificial intelligence. It addresses the material and symbolic, often lethal, violence inflicted upon Black and poor individuals and populations by the deployment of predictive systems built and backfed from datasets that reflect a history of exploitation and segregation. It begins with a historical overview of the normalisation of hypervigilance and violent control over racialized populations in the United States and in Brazil. It then shows the continuity of that control by contemporary algorithmic classification systems such as facial recognition, predictive policing, and health and security risk scores. Aligned with official narratives of racial harmony and the meritocratic justification of colour-blind policy, they are deemed neutral by their developers, private enterprises and the public institutions that employ them, who insidiously ignore their bias.