AI statecraft heating-up: the automation of governance through Canada’s Chinook case study

Chartier-Edwards, Nicolas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3775-924X; Blottière, Marek et Roberge, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9282-5218 (9999). AI statecraft heating-up: the automation of governance through Canada’s Chinook case study AI & Society . DOI: 10.1007/s00146-024-01903-5. (Sous Presse)

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Résumé

In the years 2020–2021, journalists, lawyers, scholars, and civil society actors noticed an unusual spike in the refusal of francophone African immigrants in Québec, Canada. While Immigration, refugee and citizenship Canada’s systemic racism problem were already documented, the novelty appeared to be how standardized and sometimes, “nonsensical” the reasons given to many of the applicants were. This eventually prompted a lawsuit against IRCC in which it was revealed that a new piece of software called “Chinook” had been deployed since 2018, approximately at the same time application refusal started spiking. Online and media-fueled speculations culminated in a broad debate about whether Chinook was an artificial intelligence-based technology. Such controversy, for instance, unfolded during parliamentary consultations in which it was finally disclosed that Chinook was not AI per se., but more of a half-baked automated interface. The present article aims to understand how the performative ambiguity of Chinook informs on the progressive becoming of the Canadian Federal state and its immigration control practices in the current Machine Learning hype. Furthermore, it seeks to understand how the interlacing of public–private partnership, in which the private sector is mobilized to produce AI-driven technology, recursively transforms the exercise of governance and governmentality. We argue, through the Chinook controversy and its unfolding, that there is a shift occurring where AI becomes ever more central in statecraft “anarchitecture” and cybernetic adaptability.

Type de document:	Article
Mots-clés libres:	Artificial intelligence; Chinook (software); immigration; governance; state; Canada
Centre:	Centre Urbanisation Culture Société
Date de dépôt:	10 mai 2024 20:02
Dernière modification:	12 déc. 2024 19:10
URI:	https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/15652

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