The concept ‘refusal’ in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) has attracted increased attention (e.g., Pereira, 2021). The overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, ending the right to abortion in the U.S., led Pro-choice advocates to develop Chatbot Charley (2024) to refuse this decision. Charley confidentially provides information regarding safe abortions and trustworthy doctors. It gives access to networks of knowledge critical to political concerns such as bodily autonomy, privacy, and epistemic justice. This presentation further explores the link between refusal, AI, and the political through Hannah Arendt’s political theory.

To Arendt (1958), the political is where people act in concert to work on their shared world. It depends on ‘plurality’ (the world is shared by many) and ‘natality’ (each act initiates a new beginning). Charley is the product of people acting in concert to refuse a decision that influences their world. Simultaneously, the bot is not only a use object but also creates political space where such space has been taken away by political decision-makers and the Supreme Court. This relates to Arendt’s (1958) understanding of ‘work’: the activity of making artificial objects. Such objects provide permanence to the world: a stage for political action. Honig (2017) builds on Arendt to argue that such objects are a necessary condition for democratic action. 

This presentation examines what happens when Chatbot Charley is viewed as an example of object-permanence, but also as participating in political action through refusals. It first analyses Chatbot Charley through ‘plurality,’ ‘natality,’ and ‘work’. Then, it explores how Charley’s refusal is generative, contributing to world-building practices. This allows for an examination of how AI-technologies that arise from refusals lay bare the intrinsic intertwinement of objects and subjects in political action. Refusals shape worlds. These worlds are built through objects which in turn provide again the space for subjects to participate in political action. In doing so, this presentation thus contributes to the conversation between technology and Arendt’s political theory (e.g., Płonowska Ziarek, 2022). The presentation shows how concepts such as ‘natality,’ ‘plurality’ and ‘work’ are intrinsic to these technologies, and how the latter can in turn help think these concepts anew.

References:

Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition (2nd ed). The University of Chicago Press. 
Charley the Chatbot (2024). Chatwithcharley. Charley. https://www.chatwithcharley.org 
Honig, Bonnie. (2017). Public Things. Democracy in Despair. Fordham University Press.
Pereira, G. (2021). Towards Refusing as a Critical Technical Practice: Struggling with Hegemonic Computer Vision. APRJA, 10(1), 30-43. 10.7146/aprja.v10i1.128185.
Płonowska Ziarek, E. (2022). Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Ontic-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies. Postmodern Culture, 32(2). https://doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2022.0002