Intersectional Automations: Robotics, AI, Algorithms, and Equity

Intersectional Automations explores a range of situations where robotics, biotechnological enhancement, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic culture collide with intersectional social justice issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and citizenship. As robots, machine learning applications, and human augmentics are artifacts of human culture, they sometimes carry stereotypes, biases, exclusions, and other forms of privilege into their computational logics, platforms, and/or embodiments. The essays in this multidisciplinary collection consider how questions of equity and social justice impact our understanding of these developments, analyzing not only the artifacts themselves, but also the discourses and practices surrounding them, including societal understandings, design choices, law and policy approaches, and their uses and abuses.

Julia A. Empey is a Social Sciences and Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research and publication interests focus on contemporary literature and film, feminist and posthumanist theory, and science fiction literature, film, and media. Her other interests include eco-criticism, cosmopolitan studies, and political theory.

Nathan Rambukkanais assistant professor in communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.