A Reply on Responsibility and Repair in AI : Lessons From Outer Space, Agriculture and Gay Hookup Apps
Open accessAbstract
This afterword examines artificial intelligence (AI) as the latest iteration of digital capitalism's utopian promises and resultant violences, while situating AI within broader conversations on responsibility and repair in digital geographies. Building from what Lucy Suchman describes as its ‘strategic vagueness’, and much like ‘big data’ in the 2010s, AI is promoted through power and manipulation: supposedly able to solve social, political and environmental crises, while obscuring its colonial and racist infrastructures. Responding to interventions by Katarzyna Cieslik, Yung Au and Margath Walker with Jamie Winders, we trace the ways AI's supply chains span from agricultural megafarms to outer space, and we bring in another intimate geography of AI: the work of Trust & Safety professionals, particularly those working in dating and hookup apps. We argue that AI itself cannot serve as an agent of repair in the harms it causes. Instead, repair emerges through human networks of accountability and care, informed by feminist, Black, queer, trans and decolonial frameworks.
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- Authors
- Stevens, N., & Gieseking, J. J.
- Affiliations
- Smith College, Statistical & Data Sciences Program Northampton Massachusetts USA
- CUNY Graduate Center, Public Science Project New York New York USA
- ORCID
- Gieseking, Jack Jen
- Venue
- Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2025-12-23
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 2
- ISSN
- 0020-2754 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-5661
- OpenAlex
- W7117119390
- Semantic Scholar
- 33a4191e2c428cde5cb866d40fa5826778429d17
- Cited by
- 2
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2
- FWCI
- 2.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Feminism, Gender, and Intersectionality
- Social Sciences › Law › Digitalization, Law, and Regulation
- Keywords
- artificial intelligence, digital capitalism, responsibility, repair, digital geography, colonial infrastructure, AI supply chain, outer space, dating apps, accountability, care, feminist frameworks, decolonial frameworks
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