AI Infrastructures and Sustainability

“This book offers an impressive scope of critical analyses of AI and sustainability. Building on decades of scholarship, this book brings together a variety of perspectives to understand the politics involved in framing and selling AI infrastructure.”

José van Dijck, Professor of Media and Digital Society, Utrecht University

“This book is essential reading for scholars interrogating the complex and rapidly emerging formation of ‘AI sustainability’.”

Nicole Starosielski, Professor of Film and Media, University of California, Berkeley.

“Finally, a volume that actually does the job of providing a critical infrastructural perspective on the much-touted relationship between AI and sustainability. A must-read for anyone interested in the social justice implications of the current AI race.”

Lina Dencik, University Research Leader in AI Justice, Goldsmiths, University of London.

“After reading this fantastic collection of chapters – empirically-grounded and theoretically ambitious, often international in scope, and always provocative – readers won’t consider AI without its tremendous impact on labor, governance, and the environment.”

Jean-Christophe Plantin, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE.

This book is an open access assembles cutting-edge research in media and communication exploring AI infrastructures and sustainability. It builds upon and expands perspectives on media infrastructure, addressing critical issues such as environmental impacts, economic concentration, and social justice – areas that have not been comprehensively examined under the umbrella term “sustainability” within discussions on AI. The authors explore the complex social, economic and material processes through which AI formations take shape, and offer novel perspectives on the entanglement of digital media, AI and sustainability discourses as they manifest in the shaping of futures with AI.

Anne Mollen is a postdoc researcher at the University of Münster. Her research focuses on justice in the context of automation, digital media and data-centric technologies, specifically social and environmental justice. She has been a member of the Sustainable AI working group of the German Committee for Sustainability Research.

Fieke Jansen is a postdoc researcher and co-principal investigator with the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interest is to understand how the material impact of expanding infrastructures is shaping the management, distribution, and depletion of natural resources. Fieke did her PhD at the data justice lab of Cardiff University.

Sigrid Kannengießer is Professor of Communication Science with a focus on Media Sociology at the University of Münster, Germany. Her research interests include digital technologies, AI infrastructures and sustainability; critical data practices; energy communication; social movements; and gender media studies.

Julia Velkova is Professor of Media and Culture at Linköping University. Her research explores the relations between digital infrastructures and energy, and the temporalities of media infrastructure. She is the co-editor of Media Backends: Digital Infrastructures and Sociotechnical Relations (2023).