Description:
AI does not live in the cloud. It is dug out of the earth, cooled with fresh water, and trained on data labeled by workers half a world away from Silicon Valley.
In this lecture, political theorist Hansong Li walks the entire global supply chain of artificial intelligence — the minerals of the DRC and Chile, the chips of Taiwan, the data centers of the Gulf, and the invisible laborers in Africa and South Asia who sift the world's filth so that others receive clean information. He then lays out the three futures Silicon Valley is actually betting on, and asks the question the industry never answers: whose welfare does AI amplify, and who carries the risk?
His conclusion is a call for planetary justice — and a warning: do not outsource your thinking to automated systems.
Hansong Li is Assistant Professor at the School of International Service, American University, and a faculty associate at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He holds a PhD from Harvard and is the author of "Common Justice: Interpolitical Thought in Western, Indian, and Chinese Traditions" (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
Timetable:
00:00 AI Is Not in the Cloud
00:20 Where AI Actually Comes From
02:03 Whose Knowledge Counts
03:29 Can a Chatbot Respect You?
05:26 Silicon Valley's Dark Enlightenment
05:47 Minerals, Water, and Compute
07:48 Who Does the Dirty Work
08:38 The Invisible Labor Behind AI
12:30 The Data Funnel
17:45 The Scholarship That Got Squeezed Out
22:52 Where Are We Heading?
24:20 Three Visions of the Future
29:00 The Robot-Centric Dream: Abundance Through Automation
29:59 Planetary Justice and Normative Agency
In this lecture, political theorist Hansong Li walks the entire global supply chain of artificial intelligence — the minerals of the DRC and Chile, the chips of Taiwan, the data centers of the Gulf, and the invisible laborers in Africa and South Asia who sift the world's filth so that others receive clean information. He then lays out the three futures Silicon Valley is actually betting on, and asks the question the industry never answers: whose welfare does AI amplify, and who carries the risk?
His conclusion is a call for planetary justice — and a warning: do not outsource your thinking to automated systems.
Hansong Li is Assistant Professor at the School of International Service, American University, and a faculty associate at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He holds a PhD from Harvard and is the author of "Common Justice: Interpolitical Thought in Western, Indian, and Chinese Traditions" (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
Timetable:
00:00 AI Is Not in the Cloud
00:20 Where AI Actually Comes From
02:03 Whose Knowledge Counts
03:29 Can a Chatbot Respect You?
05:26 Silicon Valley's Dark Enlightenment
05:47 Minerals, Water, and Compute
07:48 Who Does the Dirty Work
08:38 The Invisible Labor Behind AI
12:30 The Data Funnel
17:45 The Scholarship That Got Squeezed Out
22:52 Where Are We Heading?
24:20 Three Visions of the Future
29:00 The Robot-Centric Dream: Abundance Through Automation
29:59 Planetary Justice and Normative Agency