Our col­league Dr. Anne Burkhardt, togeth­er with Dr. Beatrice Bonami (Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh, Scot­land) and Dr. Fran­ci­elle Var­gas (Uni­ver­sity of San­ti­ago, Chile), suc­cess­fully estab­lished a new work­ing group on „AI & Glob­al Justice“ at the Tübin­gen Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary Centre for Glob­al South Stud­ies (ICGSS).

The working group

In line with the institute's object­ive of pro­mot­ing dia­logue between research­ers, schol­ars and post­gradu­ates from Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Lat­in Amer­ica and Europe on issues relat­ing to the intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges of the Glob­al South, the work­ing group focuses on key ques­tions of justice sur­round­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in pre­cisely these countries.

Par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of the Glob­al North, which ini­tially held an eco­nom­ic advant­age and super­i­or digit­al infra­struc­tures, the Glob­al South bears a large share of the eco­nom­ic, envir­on­ment­al and social costs, for example through the extrac­tion of raw mater­i­als, inhu­mane work­ing con­di­tions, data colo­ni­al­ism or the high energy con­sump­tion of data centers.

But epi­stem­ic justice is also a key focus of the work­ing group: Whose know­ledge, lan­guages, val­ues and exper­i­ences are rep­res­en­ted in AI sys­tems, and which per­spect­ives remain invis­ible or are marginalized?

Draw­ing on vari­ous empir­ic­al and the­or­et­ic­al approaches, such as deco­lo­ni­al the­ory or diversity-sens­it­ive design and per­spect­ives from both regions, the group aims to invest­ig­ate how AI makes glob­al injustices vis­ible, or even rein­forces and trans­forms them. At the same time, approaches to a more glob­ally just use of AI tech­no­lo­gies are to be developed. Par­tic­u­lar emphas­is is placed on voices that are often under­rep­res­en­ted in dom­in­ant AI debates such as women and Indi­gen­ous communities.

Events

As an ini­tial high­light, we are pleased to lead a pan­el at the 7th Annu­al Con­fer­ence of the ICGSS (16 – 27 Novem­ber 2026) on the 18th Novem­ber on the topic:

"(Entangled Rela­tions of) Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Water: Con­flicts over Infra­struc­tures, Epi­stem­o­lo­gies, and Power in Lat­in Amer­ica"

Some of the key ques­tions include:

• Where does the water that sus­tains AI come from, whose ter­rit­or­ies provide it, and who bears the costs?
• Who main­tains and pro­tects loc­al know­ledge about water?
• And who has the right to decide over its mean­ing and use?

The par­ti­cipants:

Beatrice Bonami: Mater­i­al Meta­bol­isms of AI: between water cos­mo­pol­it­ics and data sov­er­eignty and gov­ernance in Sierra Nevada, Colombia.

Car­los Gomes: From Water to Data and Affect: Hydrodi­git­al Fron­ti­ers, Triple Expro­pri­ation, and Eth­nora­cial Secur­it­iz­a­tion in the Geo­pol­it­ics of GenAI

Fran­ci­elle Var­gas: Ter­rit­ori­al­iz­ing AI and Large Lan­guage Mod­els: Data Cen­ters, Water and Indi­gen­ous Ter­rit­or­ies in Chile

Anne Burkhardt: Moderation

A par­tic­u­lar high­light is that Paulo Anacé, an Indi­gen­ous com­munity lead­er from Brazil belong­ing to the Anacé do Kauype people, will be trav­el­ing spe­cific­ally to attend the con­fer­ence for a key­note speech on "Our Land Is Not a Back­yard for Data Cen­ters": Anacé Cos­mo­lo­gies, Spec­tral Warn­ings, and the Fight for the Kauipe River on the 18th Novem­ber. He is known, among oth­er things, for his work fight­ing against the water-intens­ive prac­tices of data centers.