The production and promotion of so-called “AI” technology involves dehumanization on many fronts: The computational metaphor valorizes one kind of cognitive activity as “intelligence”, devaluing many other aspects of human experience, while also focusing on agents as isolated individuals rather than seeing the importance of being located within webs of relationships and belonging to communities. 
 

AI research paradigms frequently frame the purpose of humans to be labelers of data or interchangeable machine components. Meanwhile, data collected from and about people is understood as “ground truth” even while it lies about those people, especially marginalized people. 
 

In this talk, I will explore these processes of dehumanization and the vital role that the humanities have in resisting these trends by painting a deeper and richer picture of what it is to be human and keeping the focus there.