Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

0:00
0:00

Artificial intelligence is creating a new colonial world order

An MIT Technology Review series investigates how AI is enriching a powerful few by dispossessing communities that have been dispossessed before.

This story is the introduction to MIT Technology Review’s series on AI colonialism, which was supported by the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program and the Pulitzer Center. Read the full series here.

My husband and I love to eat and to learn about history. So shortly after we married, we chose to honeymoon along the southern coast of Spain. The region, historically ruled by Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and Christians in turn, is famed for its stunning architecture and rich fusion of cuisines.

Little did I know how much this personal trip would intersect with my reporting. Over the last few years, an increasing number of scholars have argued that the impact of AI is repeating the patterns of colonial history. European colonialism, they say, was characterized by the violent capture of land, extraction of resources, and exploitation of people—for example, through slavery—for the economic enrichment of the conquering country. While it would diminish the depth of past traumas to say the AI industry is repeating this violence today, it is now using other, more insidious means to enrich the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the poor.

I had already begun to investigate these claims when my husband and I began to journey through Seville, Córdoba, Granada, and Barcelona. As I simultaneously read The Costs of Connection, one of the foundational texts that first proposed a “data colonialism,” I realized that these cities were the birthplaces of European colonialism—cities through which Christopher Columbus traveled as he voyaged back and forth to the Americas, and through which the Spanish crown transformed the world order.

In Barcelona especially, physical remnants of this past abound. The city is known for its Catalan modernism, an iconic aesthetic popularized by Antoni Gaudí, the mastermind behind the Sagrada Familia. The architectural movement was born in part from the investments of wealthy Spanish families who amassed riches from their colonial businesses and funneled the money into lavish mansions.

One of the most famous, known as the Casa Lleó Morera, was built early in the 20th century with profits made from the sugar trade in Puerto Rico. While tourists from around the world today visit the mansion for its beauty, Puerto Rico still suffers from food insecurity because for so long its fertile land produced cash crops for Spanish merchants instead of sustenance for the local people.

As we stood in front of the intricately carved façade, which features flora, mythical creatures, and four women holding the four greatest inventions of the time (a lightbulb, a telephone, a gramophone, and a camera), I could see the parallels between this embodiment of colonial extraction and global AI development.

The AI industry does not seek to capture land as the conquistadors of the Caribbean and Latin America did, but the same desire for profit drives it to expand its reach. The more users a company can acquire for its products, the more subjects it can have for its algorithms, and the more resources—data—it can harvest from their activities, their movements, and even their bodies.

Neither does the industry still exploit labor through mass-scale slavery, which necessitated the propagation of racist beliefs that dehumanized entire populations. But it has developed new ways of exploiting cheap and precarious labor, often in the Global South, shaped by implicit ideas that such populations don’t need—or are less deserving of—livable wages and economic stability.

MIT Technology Review's new AI Colonialism series digs into these and other parallels between AI development and the colonial past by examining communities that have been profoundly changed by the technology. In part one, we head to South Africa, where AI surveillance tools, built on the extraction of people’s behaviors and faces, are re-entrenching racial hierarchies and fueling a digital apartheid.

In part two, we head to Venezuela, where AI data-labeling firms found cheap and desperate workers amid a devastating economic crisis, creating a new model of labor exploitation. The series also looks at ways to move away from these dynamics. In part three, we visit ride-hailing drivers in Indonesia who, by building power through community, are learning to resist algorithmic control and fragmentation. In part four, we end in Aotearoa, the Māori name for New Zealand, where an Indigenous couple are wresting back control of their community’s data to revitalize its language.

Together, the stories reveal how AI is impoverishing the communities and countries that don’t have a say in its development—the same communities and countries already impoverished by former colonial empires. They also suggest how AI could be so much more—a way for the historically dispossessed to reassert their culture, their voice, and their right to determine their own future.

That is ultimately the aim of this series: to broaden the view of AI’s impact on society so as to begin to figure out how things could be different. It’s not possible to talk about “AI for everyone” (Google’s rhetoric), “responsible AI” (Facebook’s rhetoric), or “broadly distribut[ing]” its benefits (OpenAI’s rhetoric) without honestly acknowledging and confronting the obstacles in the way.

Now a new generation of scholars is championing a “decolonial AI” to return power from the Global North back to the Global South, from Silicon Valley back to the people. My hope is that this series can provide a prompt for what “decolonial AI” might look like—and an invitation, because there’s so much more to explore.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Taylor Swift Gains Ownership of Her First Six Albums
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Satirical Sketch Sparks Political Spouse Feud in South Korea
Indonesia Quarry Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
South Korean Election Video Pulled Amid Misogyny Outcry
Asian Economies Shift Away from US Dollar Amid Trade Tensions
Netflix Investigates Allegations of On-Set Mistreatment in K-Drama Production
US Defence Chief Reaffirms Strong Ties with Singapore Amid Regional Tensions
Vietnam Faces Strategic Dilemma Over China's Mekong River Projects
Malaysia's First AI Preacher Sparks Debate on Islamic Principles
White House Press Secretary Criticizes Harvard Funding, Advocates for Vocational Training
France to Implement Nationwide Smoking Ban in Outdoor Spaces Frequented by Children
Meta and Anduril Collaborate on AI-Driven Military Augmented Reality Systems
Russia's Fossil Fuel Revenues Approach €900 Billion Since Ukraine Invasion
U.S. Justice Department Reduces American Bar Association's Role in Judicial Nominations
U.S. Department of Energy Unveils 'Doudna' Supercomputer to Advance AI Research
U.S. SEC Dismisses Lawsuit Against Binance Amid Regulatory Shift
Alcohol Industry Faces Increased Scrutiny Amid Health Concerns
Italy Faces Population Decline Amid Youth Emigration
×