Narratives of Artificial Intelligence in a Gendered and Racialized World : Emergence on the African Continent

Based upon a qualitative discourse analysis of media accounts by and for African-based sources and/or directed at audiences on the continent of Africa, we are finding four related narrative frames that are giving normative meaning and value to AI-related technologies. These are optimism, value neutrality, linear time and progress, and disruption. Very few media sources are explicitly referencing “gender,” “women,” or “men” when discussing AI-related technologies. We argue that these narrative insertions and gender deletions reinforce and design the default settings of AI-related technologies as masculine, white, heteronormative, able bodied, and Western, which simultaneously limits and makes apparent alternative possibilities for articulating AI otherwise. Full paper available at https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot/virtual