Politicizing Data: AI Ethics as a Social Critique of Algorithms

The history of AI ethics reflects a mix of competing visions of norms and values for a technological future. While the fundamental tensions within the conceptualization and practice of AI ethics have played out in complex ways, this article examines the weaknesses inherent in trying to examine power from an ethical perspective, as well as to develop social policy from an individualist framework of ethical responsibility. What is needed to fully realize the social critique of AI and guide its legal regulation are theories of value based in social values and theories of technology based in systemic power dynamics. The pursuit of such a critique should also build upon science and technology studies theory and point toward a more critical mode of the social inquiry of technology.