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Short abstract:

Due to a discourse of AI democratization, beginners in AI development increasingly become users of corporate cloud platforms. I perform a critical discourse analysis of Google’s ML platform Vertex AI to show how Google discursively and infrastructurally centers itself at the heart of AI development.

Long abstract:

Google’s search engine, Facebook’s social network, Amazon’s marketplace – these and other platforms have been comprehensively analyzed for the socio-economic transformations they have brought about in the last decades. However, while these platforms are fundamentally powered by AI technologies, the growing platformization of AI itself has not been in focus of attention so far. Yet, it is similar discursive practices big tech is mobilizing to sustainably shape AI development. Under the discourse of a “democratization” of AI, beginners in AI development increasingly become the users of corporate cloud platforms, leading to the expansion of big tech’s infrastructural power. My contribution focuses on Google AI’s democratization discourse as offering “tools for everyone”. I detail this discourse via Google’s ML platform Vertex AI which provides users with tools for ML development and addresses advanced and less experienced developers with a low-code approach. By means of a critical discourse analysis of the platform’s documentation, I illustrate how Google presents the platform as simplifying AI development and empowering users in shaping the future of AI. I clarify how this democratization rather needs to be seen as an establishment of corporate AI products and as strategy to meet the increasing need for AI talent. Further, Google particularly enables generative AI, ensuring businesses to become reliant on its vast data and computing resources. Consequently, instead of a true participation in the design of AI applications, Google’s AI democratization only represents a commodified version of ML development which enforces capitalist logics of scale and data accumulation.