A New AI Lexicon: Exporting AI

AI/ML models are often exported. For example, large tech companies tend to congregate in particular parts of the world and sell software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, even surveillance-as-a-service in neatly-bound packages on a subscription basis to individuals, companies, and authorities around the world [1]. As a service/product/labour, AI/ML systems are also frequently exceptionalized where sleek models are intentionally portrayed to magically appear from thin air, skipping the commodity chain altogether. Software and virtual products are often decoupled from their material entanglements -- divorced from the vast lithium farms of the Atacama Desert, the cold data centers underneath the Alps, the data annotation centers scattered across the world, and the digital graveyards in the Korle Lagoon [2], [3]. As a feature of our capitalist society, all global supply chains have hidden components -- whether it is the obfuscation of sweatshops that operate on child labor or the efforts made towards washing the blood off of the diamond industry.