Shaping AI

This volume challenges the dominant narrative of artificial intelligence as a neutral, inevitable force, showing instead how AI is a political project shaped by power, labor, and history. This volume challenges the dominant narrative of artificial intelligence as a neutral, inevitable force, showing instead how AI is a political project shaped by power, labor, and history. Bridging technical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives, it examines how AI systems—from healthcare algorithms to generative models—reorganize inequality, redistribute risk, and reshape human agency across global contexts. Contributors trace AI’s lived consequences through lenses including health equity, disability justice, and technocolonialism, alongside sustained inquiry into knowledge, embodiment, and responsibility. The book critiques the “technological fix,” arguing that treating social problems as engineering puzzles can deepen structural injustice—especially when governance frameworks prioritize efficiency over equity and procedural compliance over justice. Moving beyond critique to praxis, this collection invites readers to reclaim agency in the algorithmic age. It offers critical orientations for building AI grounded in care, democratic contestation, and collective responsibility—so that technology serves human flourishing rather than extraction and control.