All Models

All Models are wrong, but some are useful. Mainstream AI discourse stresses the need for unbiased data and algorithms to ensure fair representation, but overlooks the intrinsic limits of any statistical technique. Machine learning is a statistical model of the world and we should question the way it operates, also statistically, in world-making. The statistical models of machine learning have silently become a new ubiquitous Kulturtechnik through which the perception of the world is increasingly mediated and jobs are automated. From face recognition and self-driving cars to automated decision making, AI constructs, fosters and controls statistical models of society.