Glossary
Key concepts bridging anthropology and AI studies
A
Affective Labor in AI
FeministThe emotional work involved in managing, correcting, or simulating human-like empathy within AI systems. This labor is gendered and often devalued, despite being essential for 'human-centered' AI interactions.
AI Application
Female customer service agents being replaced by chatbots that they themselves must 'soften' and train to handle irate customers with simulated care.
Agentic AI (Critical)
AI EthicsSystems capable of autonomous action to achieve goals. A decolonial critique examines how 'agency' is often a mask for corporate interests and how it displaces human accountability while relying on hidden human maintenance.
AI Application
Anthropic's 'Mythos' model being framed as an agent with recursive self-improvement, which obscures the vast energy grids and data labelers required for its 'autonomy.'
Algorithmic Imaginary
STSThe way people envision, understand, and relate to algorithms — the cultural narratives, expectations, and anxieties that shape how algorithmic systems are perceived, adopted, and contested in society.
AI Application
When users believe a social media feed is 'manipulating' them or that a hiring AI is 'objective,' they are engaging with algorithmic imaginaries rather than the actual technical operation of these systems.
Algorithmic Oppression
Critical Race TheoryThe systematic disadvantage or silencing of marginalized groups through automated decision-making. As defined by Safiya Noble, it recognizes that algorithms are not mathematical accidents but reflections of power structures.
AI Application
Search engine results that reinforce hyper-sexualized stereotypes of Black and Latina women through biased ranking logic.
B
Biometric Colonialism
STSThe use of biological data collection (DNA, faces, fingerprints) to categorize, track, and manage populations, particularly in the Global South or at borders. It treats the human body as a data-rich territory to be mapped and controlled.
AI Application
The deployment of experimental iris-scanning technology in humanitarian aid distribution, making survival contingent on digital data extraction.
Black Box
STSA system whose internal workings are opaque to outside observers. In AI studies, it refers both to the technical opacity of complex models and to the deliberate concealment of algorithmic processes behind proprietary secrecy.
AI Application
A credit scoring algorithm that denies a loan application without explaining which factors led to the decision operates as a black box — the affected individual cannot contest what they cannot see.
C
Coloniality of AI
PostcolonialThe persistence of colonial power patterns in the design and deployment of AI, even after formal decolonization. It refers to the hierarchical classification of humans (race/gender) that remains embedded in AI's logic of optimization.
AI Application
Western AI companies testing experimental high-risk surveillance tools on refugee populations before deploying them in domestic markets.
Cyborg Politics
Feminist TechnoscienceA strategy of embracing the hybridity of human and machine to break down binary oppositions (man/woman, natural/artificial). It is a tool for resisting essentialist identities while remaining critical of the tech's origins.
AI Application
Using AI-generated art to explore gender fluidity and challenge traditional 'human' aesthetics in digital spaces.
D
Data Colonialism
PostcolonialThe appropriation of human life through data extraction, continuing the historical patterns of colonialism by which resources and labor were seized from colonized peoples. Data colonialism creates new social relations based on continuous monitoring and data harvesting.
AI Application
Tech companies deploying 'free' internet services in Africa to harvest user data for AI training, while the economic value flows to Silicon Valley headquarters, replicates colonial extraction patterns.
Decolonial AI Literacy
Feminist/DecolonialA pedagogical framework that teaches users to look beyond the user interface to understand the labor, history, and resource extraction that makes AI possible. It prioritizes resistance over mere technical proficiency.
AI Application
A course module that asks students to map the supply chain of their smartphone's AI chip back to specific mines and labor conditions.
E
Epistemic Enclosure
Decolonial FeministThe process by which AI corporations monopolize the production and validation of knowledge, framing their proprietary datasets as the only legitimate reality. It silences non-Western or non-profitable ways of knowing.
AI Application
LLMs that prioritize English-language Western philosophy as 'common sense' while treating Indigenous ecological knowledge as 'anecdotal' or 'invalid.'
Epistemic Violence
Decolonial FeministThe silencing of marginalized perspectives through the imposition of Western knowledge frameworks. In AI, it occurs when datasets exclude Indigenous languages, oral histories, or non-binary gender concepts.
AI Application
Generative AI models that default to 'traditional' Western wedding imagery when asked to depict a 'standard wedding,' effectively erasing global cultural diversity.
Extractivism
Political EconomyThe logic of treating the earth and marginalized bodies as infinite, free resources to be mined for technological progress. In AI, this refers to both physical minerals (lithium/cobalt) and 'data exhaust.'
AI Application
The $50 billion Amazon-OpenAI deal driving massive demand for data centers that drain local water tables and require intensive mineral mining in the DRC.
G
Ghost Work
Political EconomyThe hidden human labor that powers AI systems — including data labeling, content moderation, and quality assurance — performed by workers who are invisible to the end users who perceive these systems as autonomous.
AI Application
The millions of click-workers who label images for self-driving car training data, often paid pennies per task in the Global South, represent the ghost work underlying automotive AI.
I
Indigenous Data Sovereignty
Indigenous StudiesThe inherent right of Indigenous peoples and nations to govern the collection, ownership, and application of data about their people, lands, and resources. It challenges the universalizing 'open data' movement that often facilitates colonial extraction.
AI Application
Indigenous communities demanding that LLMs not be trained on their sacred oral histories without explicit consent and benefit-sharing agreements.
Inscription
Actor-Network TheoryThe process by which values, assumptions, and power relations are embedded into technical artifacts. Technologies carry the intentions and biases of their designers, even when they appear neutral.
AI Application
When a voice assistant is designed to recognize standard American English but struggles with African American Vernacular English, linguistic hierarchies are inscribed into the technology.
Intersectional AI Critique
FeministAn analytical framework that examines how AI produces harm at the intersections of race, gender, class, and ability. It moves beyond 'women in tech' to look at how specific groups (e.g., Black trans women) are uniquely targeted by algorithms.
AI Application
Analyzing how automated hiring tools penalize applicants who have both gender-non-conforming names and addresses in lower-income zip codes.
K
Kinship and Relationality
AnthropologyAn anthropological lens that views AI not as a tool or a master, but through its relationships to ecology, ancestors, and community. It challenges the Western individualist 'I' at the center of AI development.
AI Application
Reframing AI as a 'technological relative' that requires reciprocal care and ethical responsibility rather than an extractive commodity.
M
Man-Machine (Wynterian Critique)
Decolonial FeministBased on Sylvia Wynter’s work, this critique challenges AI's definition of 'human' as the Western, bourgeois, liberal subject (Man), which automatically excludes those colonized or racialized as 'Other.'
AI Application
Critiquing AI safety benchmarks that measure 'human values' by only surveying university students in North America and Europe.
P
Platform Imperialism
PostcolonialThe dominance of a few Western-based technology platforms over the global digital infrastructure, which forces non-Western nations to adopt Western cultural values and economic models built into the tech.
AI Application
The widespread use of American-centric LLMs in Norwegian elementary schools (as discussed in news) potentially erasing local pedagogical traditions and language nuances.
S
Situated Knowledge
FeministDonna Haraway's concept that all knowledge is produced from a particular standpoint — there is no 'view from nowhere.' Knowledge claims are always partial, embodied, and shaped by the social position of the knower.
AI Application
An AI system trained on medical data from primarily male subjects produces 'knowledge' situated in a particular body — it may fail to diagnose conditions that present differently in women.
Situated Knowledges
Feminist TechnoscienceA feminist epistemological framework by Donna Haraway that rejects the 'god trick' of objective, universal vision. It posits that all knowledge—including AI outputs—is produced from specific, partial, and embodied social locations.
AI Application
Critiquing an AI model's 'universal' medical advice by pointing out it was trained primarily on data from white male populations in the Global North.
Sovereign AI
DecolonialThe movement to build AI systems that are locally hosted, open-source, and independent of Big Tech's cloud infrastructure. It aims to protect local data from being harvested by foreign corporate interests.
AI Application
Vitalik Buterin's shift to a private, local LLM stack to avoid 'cloud AI' risks and maintain personal and data autonomy.
Surveillance Capitalism
Political EconomyAn economic system built on the extraction and commodification of personal data for prediction and behavioral modification. Coined by Shoshana Zuboff, it describes how tech companies convert human experience into behavioral data for profit.
AI Application
Google's core business model — offering free search while harvesting user data to predict and influence purchasing behavior through targeted advertising — is the paradigmatic case of surveillance capitalism.
T
Techno-Abolitionism
Abolitionist StudiesAn approach that seeks to dismantle carceral and surveillance technologies rather than simply 'fixing' their biases. It argues that some systems, such as facial recognition for policing, are inherently harmful and cannot be made ethical.
AI Application
Community activists successfully lobbying for a total ban on AI-driven biometric surveillance in public housing instead of asking for 'more diverse' training data.
Techno-Civility
Critical TheoryThe use of 'ethical' or 'responsible' AI rhetoric to mask the underlying violence of extraction and surveillance. It frames harmful systems as 'polite' or 'fair' to discourage radical resistance.
AI Application
Corporate 'Responsible AI Principles' that focus on fairness metrics while ignoring the ecological destruction caused by the data centers running those 'fair' models.
Technological Redlining
Critical Race TheoryThe digital evolution of redlining, where algorithms are used to systematically deny access to credit, housing, or insurance to people based on their digital footprint or residency in marginalized areas.
AI Application
AI-driven insurance premiums that are higher for individuals who live in neighborhoods with high densities of people of color, regardless of personal record.
The New Jim Code
Critical Race TheoryA concept developed by Ruha Benjamin describing how automated systems reflect and reproduce existing racial hierarchies while appearing 'objective' or 'neutral.' It highlights how technological 'innovation' can function as a new layer of systemic discrimination.
AI Application
Predictive policing algorithms that use historical arrest data to target Black neighborhoods demonstrate how old racial biases are encoded into 'new' AI systems.
Thick Description
STSClifford Geertz's method of describing human behavior with enough context and detail to make it meaningful to an outsider. Applied to AI, it means going beyond technical specifications to understand the cultural, social, and political context of how systems operate.
AI Application
A thick description of a facial recognition system would include not just its accuracy metrics, but the history of physiognomy, racial profiling practices, and the lived experiences of communities subjected to its deployment.
