Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are often described in the current zeitgeist as having magical, super-human qualities. Critics have emphasized that these rhetorical allusions to magic are designed to obscure developer responsibility for the direct and indirect consequences of new products, and to frame these technologies as uncontrollable and inevitable. In other words, these claims to magic are strategically useful to Big Tech developers.
But throughout contemporary history, rhetorical claims and accusations of magic have been levelled at people and communities in order to justify legal repression, dispossession, and colonial conquest and expansion. Why then is a claim to magic useful for avoiding legal constraints in the AI context, where it has so often justified legal dispossession, exploitation, and enslavement?
This incongruity is bridged at least in part by a common function of enchantment discourse: to obscure imperial policy, justify colonial actions, and to Other and dehumanize the people and land needed to maintain economic and political dominance. In other words, ‘magic’ follows a common rhetorical and legal thread that links historical and ongoing colonial processes of exploitation of people and planet. Uncontested claims that AI is magical carry serious consequences for global environments. This presentation draws on a co-authored paper, in which we hope that making this connection more discernible can help demystify international processes that may restrain the growth of an imperial industry.
Speaker
Dr. Kristen Thomasen is one of the leading Canadian experts in robotics law and policy, specializing in drone regulation and the privacy impacts of robotic technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Thomasen is an Associate Professor and Chair in Law, Robotics and Society at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. Before joining Windsor Law, Dr. Thomasen was an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia from 2021 to 2024. Previously, Dr. Thomasen clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada for the Honourable Justice Rosalie Abella and at the Alberta Court of King’s Bench and is a member of the Law Society of Alberta.
Learn more on the Allard School website.
