Paper short abstract:

This text delves into the intricate relationship between slavery, machines, and artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting how technology serves coloniality. It critiques the perpetuation of supremacist ideals while exploring critical discourses within the arts and sciences.

Paper long abstract:

In the emergence of Western dominance within the global modern economy, a paradox arises: the discourse of freedom juxtaposed with the practice of slavery. This contradiction finds resonance in Descartes' concept of "automata" as soulless beings, reinforcing the dehumanization of slaves. These beings, devoid of autonomy, are objects naturally predisposed to the supervision of self-proclaimed human masters. This notion underpins the development of modern mechanical and computational automation technologies, such as AI, fueling projects aimed at liberating the proclaimed universal subject from labor through machine enslavement.

Critiquing supremacist ideals, it navigates critical discourses within the arts and sciences, unveiling how historical oppression shapes modern technological landscapes. Emphasizing art as both method and critique, it explores intersections of technology, race, and power, drawing insights from feminist studies, Brazilian indigenous contemporary art, and African gnosis.

Through interdisciplinary dialogue and reflection, the intercultural and situated understanding of technology presented by the artists and scientists we invoke in this text helps us understand AI as the realization of mental schemas that forge social and political structures constituting human societies. Researching technologies, or as Yuk Hui invites us to consider, contemplating cosmotecnics, is a way to challenge the extractivist models that have shaped our path thus far and combat what the enchanted Nego Bispo referred to as cosmophobia, the need for compartmentalization and separation underlying the idea of enslavement.