counter algorithmic reason by “enable[ing] the political formation of algorithms as public things” (pp. 217-218). Aradau and Blanke’s insistence on the democratic potential of algorithms, despite their critiques, is one… Click to show full abstract
counter algorithmic reason by “enable[ing] the political formation of algorithms as public things” (pp. 217-218). Aradau and Blanke’s insistence on the democratic potential of algorithms, despite their critiques, is one of Algorithmic Reason’s most welcome interventions. Too often, critics of AI and of algorithms more generally emphasize the ways that they undermine democratic politics. While these critiques are admittedly compelling, Aradau and Blanke provide a conceptual framework that can help articulate these challenges while still leaving room for political action to address them. Algorithmic Reason suggests that we consider algorithms not as something imposed on us by experts who ultimately retain responsibility (and control), but rather as “public things” that gather groups of people into specific kinds of political relationships. Attending to the problems with algorithms, in this reframing, is thus not (only) a problem of identifying the right set of ethical principles to, say, govern AI decision-making. Rather, it is (also) one of fostering the kinds of spaces that make visible the publics around algorithms, rendering the algorithms objects of contestation and collective action by a plurality of constituencies. One model for this is Aradau and Blanke’s example of a “hackathon” (Chapter 6) that brought together users and technologists to discuss the technical operations of algorithms and their effects “in a collective setting” (p. 157). Such interventions serve as productive strategies to address algorithmic harms because they specifically account for the political dimensions involved—the collective disagreement, deliberation, and action that are part and parcel of democratic life. Examples such as the hackathon are present throughout Algorithmic Reason, due to Aradau and Blanke’s novel methodological approach. Drawing from Rancière’s concept of the “scene,” the authors use a series of rich and provocative examples to “trace how algorithmic variations inflect and hold together heterogenous practices of governing across time and space” (p. 14). From the Cambridge Analytica scandal (Chapter 1) to Spotify patents (Chapter 5) to Google employees’ petitions (Chapter 6) and class-action lawsuits by Facebook content moderators (Chapter 8), Algorithmic Reason takes up a range of debates that have captured the public’s imagination regarding algorithms. Through these scenes, Aradau and Blanke explore the tensions at work in disparate practices of algorithmic reason. In so doing, they reframe the debates about algorithms away from what they are doing—the inputs, outputs, and calculations—and focus instead on how algorithms are doing it, including the way that logic may (re)shape our political vision. But while Algorithmic Reason’s political orientation and provocative examples help to underscore the value of Aradau and Blanke’s framework for rethinking the role of algorithms in public life, the practical implications of this work remain underdeveloped in the text. This is, in part, a question of method: Aradau and Blanke are clear that their use of the “methodology of the scene” is intended to help “attend to how controversies unfold” (p. 208) in ways that reveal “a trajectory of algorithmic reason as undetermined” (p. 218). Algorithmic Reason, then, works to give readers a new vocabulary with which to understand algorithms and their effects. But it remains to be seen what this means for practically addressing the challenges that Aradau and Blanke identify. How does attending to algorithmic reason as a system of governance change the way we approach AI governance? How do we scale up spaces like the hackathon to meet the scope of mass society on which algorithms operate? And what is the role of experts in this work? That Algorithmic Reason generates such questions testifies to the richness of the framework that Aradau and Blanke provide. And, unlike many who study algorithms, they conclude on an optimistic note: despite its influence, “algorithmic reason does not undo democracy, reflexivity, or political action” (p. 218). Rather, by attending to the effects of algorithmic reason—the way it radically shifts the categorization we use to understand the world—we can counteract some of its tendencies. The goal, then, is not to find a single set of principles through which to make algorithms “legitimate,” but rather to create spaces within which we can treat algorithms as the public things they are—to ensure that we properly understand them as objects of collective concern.
               
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