[Air-L] Melbourne book launch event - 'Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of Ethics in AI'

[Thao Phan]

*Book Launch Event and Celebration*

*Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of 'Ethics' in AIEdited by Thao Phan,
Jake Goldenfein, Declan Kuch, and Monique Mann*

*Date: *4pm, Wednesday April 26 2023
*Location: *Common Room, Level 9, Melbourne Law School
*Details and registration: *
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/ADM+s/event/28626-economies-of-virtue-book-launch-event-and
<https://events.unimelb.edu.au/ADM+s/event/28626-economies-of-virtue-book-launch-event-and>

Please join us in celebrating the launch of Economies of Virtue: The
Circulation of ‘Ethics’ in AI, edited by Thao Phan, Jake Goldenfein, Declan
Kuch, and Delcan Kuch published open access by the Institute of Network
Cultures in late 2022.

This event includes a brief panel conversation hosted by the editors and
contributing authors followed by drinks and snacks. Speakers include: Prof
Sarah Pink, A/Prof Michael Richardson, Dr Laura Bedford, Dr Jake
Goldenfein, and Dr Jathan Sadowski, and chaired by Dr Thao Phan.

The book is freely available online. Physical copies of the book will be
available for FREE, in addition to other INC publications:
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/economies-of-virtue-the-circulation-of-ethics-in-ai/

Those attending the launch event may also be interested in attending the ADM+S
Public Lecture by Angieszka Leszczynski
<https://events.humanitix.com/adms-public-lecture-angieszka-leszczynski>,
Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & Environment at Western
University in Canada. The lecture is titled “Urban platform materialities:
aesthetics, glitches, amenities” and begins at 6pm at the Kaleide Theatre,
RMIT (a short walk from the Melbourne Law School).

*About the Book:*

AI ethics has never been far from the industries it sought to critique.
While originally designed to bring values such as fairness, accountability
and transparency to Big Tech and its products, the lines between Big Tech’s
PR initiatives and AI ethics funding has never been clear. In practice, AI
ethics now operates as a means for the co-option of critics and to enable
regulatory capture. It is used by corporations to create legitimacy and to
further accumulate value. The result is that ‘ethics’ has now become a
high-valued industrial commodity, and AI ethics its foundry.

This anthology is a collective response to the reification of ethics into
commodity forms. It explores how industry participation in ‘ethical AI’
research has created a new ‘economy of virtue’—a massive network of actors
variously situated across industry, civil society, and universities,
producing and circulating ethics as a service and a product. The
contributors present both critical perspectives and first-hand experiences
of this economy. They address a wide range of topics including: the
contradictions and personal dilemmas of working in industry-funded spaces;
case studies of AI ethics in domains such as defence, facial recognition,
and standards setting; critical assessments of techniques like
green-washing and the manufacture of trust; and the risks and
practicalities of direct action such as speaking up, organizing against and
dropping out. Together, these contributions give voice to the intractable
problems of co-option, capture, and complicity that plague AI ethics, and
give shape to the networks and circulations defining the field.

*Authors: *Corinne Cath and Os Keyes; Sarah Pink; Rodrigo Ochigame; Sy
Taffel, Laura Bedford, and Monique Mann; Angela Daly; Tsvetelina Hristova
and Liam Magee; Michael Richardson; Jake Goldenfein, Lilly Irani, J.
Khadijah Abdurahman, and Alex Hanna; Jathan Sadowski, Thao Phan, and
Meredith Whittaker.