Governance and interdependence in AI supply chains

Description

An event organised by Cambridge Digital Humanities

---

Speaker

Jennifer Cobbe

Abstract

Discussions around AI typically assume that one company or organisation is responsible for the system. Yet recent years have seen fundamental transformations in how digital technologies – including AI systems – are produced, distributed, and used, now working through complex supply chains of interconnected systems and actors, who together produce outcomes and functionalities. These data-driven supply chains are key infrastructures in the political economy of informational capitalism and a primary means by which certain technology companies concentrate power, enclose social and economic life, and extract value. This talk will explore the importance of AI supply chains and show how the lens of interdependence sheds light on the important questions they raise – both in terms of the private power of technology companies and opportunities for public regulation. Ultimately, understanding supply chains helps us understand how the position and power of technology companies arises and therefore how it can be conditioned, contested, resisted, and dismantled.

About Jennifer Cobbe

Dr Jennifer Cobbe is an Assistant Professor in Law and Technology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Law and an LLM in Law and Governance from Queen’s University, Belfast. Jennifer is generally interested in critical, interdisciplinary work on questions of power, political economy, and the law around internet platforms and informational capitalism, technological supply chains and infrastructures, and AI and automated decision-making.