Browsing by Author "Albornoz, Camila"

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    Decolonizing AI? Lessons from a failed experiment
    (2025) Tironi Rodo, Martin Carlos; Albornoz, Camila
    In recent years, multiple discourses have arisen about the necessity of decolonizing the imaginaries surrounding artificial intelligence, which tend to reinforce the interests and values of the Global North. A key challenge lies in unsettling these dominant imaginaries by developing conceptual and methodological tools that foster technodiversity and promote more inclusive approaches to technological development. This article reflects on a failed speculative design intervention that sought to decolonize artificial intelligence imaginaries, drawing on Latin American contexts as a point of reference. This experience of failure prompts us to question the nature and limitations of the critical apparatus that was generated. Although the intervention we described followed a problem-validating approach, we consider that its failure can be conceptualized as a call to cultivate a new sensitivity to problem-making experiments and encourage deeper engagement with the critical insights offered by the participants themselves. Hence, we conceptualized failure as an opportunity to interrogate metalanguages and expert knowledge, which ultimately silences the critical practices of individuals.
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    Delivery workers and the interplay of digital and mobility (in)justice
    (2022) Vecchio, Giovanni; Tiznado Aitken, Ignacio Andrés; Tironi Rodo, Tomás; Albornoz, Camila; CEDEUS (Chile)
    On-demand delivery services are experiencing a moment of expansion, which the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to foster. For cities in quarantine, these services allow the supply of food and other primary goods without moving from home, making riders move and access them on behalf of the clients. During a pandemic, working as a rider potentially increases the risks of an already precarious job given the contractual arrangements and the algorithmic control that characterize this gig economy sector. We argue that platforms have generated forms of injustice that are reproduced and amplified by digital platforms encoded in the Global North, which are governed by regulations and optimization criteria that do not dialogue with the precarious reality of Global South cities. Focusing on the case of Santiago de Chile, our analysis draws on the triangulation and complementarity of two instruments: interviews before the COVID-19 pandemic and surveys involving riders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that platforms generate specific forms of injustice that affect riders and their mobility in particular. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened such forms of digital injustice, increasing the pressure for constantly working and the exposure of riders to threats such as accidents, criminality and health risks.
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    Divergent Futures in a Damaged Territory: The Rise of DataCenters and Water Conflicts in Santiago de Chile
    (2025) Tironi, Martín; Albornoz, Camila
    As promises surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven decision-making increasingly shape debates on innovation and technological development in Chile, data centers have emerged as critical infrastructures supporting visions of digital modernization. Positioned today as one of Latin America’s leading technological hubs, Chile has become a focal point for the expansion of these infrastructures. A series of narratives has been constructed around their inevitability and urgency, framing them as essential to national progress and global competitiveness. This article examines the controversy surrounding the construction of a Google data center in Cerrillos, Santiago de Chile. Through a case study grounded in interviews and citizen mobilization, we analyze how divergent sociotechnical imaginaries confront each other in debates over water consumption, “extractivism,” and the ecological limits of AI infrastructures. Drawing on the concept of divergent futures, we explore how this infrastructural dispute reveals not only disagreements about land use and environmental impact, but also ontological conflicts over what constitutes progress, development, and the future itself. We argue that these frictions illuminate the material and planetary dimensions of AI infrastructures, demanding an ethics of “planetarity” attuned to more-than-human coexistence, territorial justice, and the reorientation of digital futures amid the climate crisis.