Keynote Speaker
Micky Lee
Micky Lee is Professor of Communication, Journalism & Media at Suffolk University, Boston. A Hong Kong native, she is author of Free Information? The Case against Google and coauthor of Understanding the Business of Global Media in the Digital Age. Her research focus intersects the following three areas: International communication;
Telecommunications, information, new information and communication technologies; and Feminist political economy.
Keynote talk (online)
Viewing AI from the Bottom: A Feminist Political Economic Critique
Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, institutions and industries have been
catching up with implementing new technologies. Looming large in the discussion
were how companies can cut cost and how workers can enhance themselves. This
discussion is not new, it had already taken place during the emergence of PCs and the
internet. In this talk, I argue that a feminist political economic (FPE) perspective
dispels the assumption that technologies are neutral tools by providing a view from
the bottom. AI, like PCs and the internet, constitute social relations that prevent
certain populations from fully participating in political, economic, and civic lives while
obscuring unbalanced power relations produced and reproduced in a capitalistic
society. These relations will be illuminated by FPE when some populations are seen
as owners more than users and consumers.