Post #2432896
2026-04-24 20:50 UTC
You did not correctly read the text. Winner's essay is "Do artifacts have politics?" i.e. does a particular bridge instantiate some politics, not bridges in general.
So a particular bridge which is designed to exclude black children from school by stopping the bus carrying them sits there having racist politics. Another bridge designed to help black kids get to school might be anti-racist in its politics. They are two separate artefacts.
The author is arguing that the machines as they exist, are fascist artefacts. If you made one say with consent of everyone involved, that could not be used for commercial purposes somehow, the data and outputs were not curated via exploitation of people from the global south, the data were made to be representative of humans truly etc then this would not be a fascist artefact. The author doesn't really specifically address this as a possibility because I think it's clear that (a) this isn't happening and (b) it actually can't at the moment.
Replies (1)
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@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-24 23:22
My point is, even a racist bridge has uses as a bridge. The solution is not to tear down the bridge, it's to address the systematic racism. Likewise with GenAI tech, we are not involved in making it, nor do we promote that the way it was created was correct. We just say that people using it are not necessarily reinforcing the problem, anymore than a random pedestrian crossing that bridge would be reinforcing racism. Yes, the way the tech was created and is being used, is problematic; an imperfect creation of a deeply flawed system. I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing that any and all uses of an imperfect creation are by necessity "fascist"