Big data and artificial intelligence global asymmetries: infrastructures, skills, uses, value and side effects
Résumé
The deployment of big data and artificial intelligence technologies have been reshaping the global landscape over the last two decades. New economic actors, new institutional configurations, new dependencies and new asymmetries are emerging. U.S. and Chinese companies and institutions control most of the infrastructure, knowledge and skills needed to develop and apply these technologies. Pulled by a silent war between these two powers, the Global South, is being forced to follow a path that recreates dependency, colonialism and extractivism in a new light. Public and private actors in these countries have no choice but to accept the turnkey solutions offered by these large technology companies. This process is widening the digital divide between the North and the South. In this context, we iexplore and discuss the global asymmetries created, triggered, increased or derived from the deployment and use of these technologies in different contexts, especially in the Global South.