The intense attention to how AI technologies (AIT) are increasingly permeating aspects of society as well as people’s everyday lives often ends in a call for ethics. The need for ethical AI, or responsible AI, or trustworthy AI is put forward by scholars as well as policymakers as the answer to the potential risks that the implementation of different forms of AITs could bring. This chapter has the ambition of bringing together the state-of-the art regarding the discussion on AI and ethics in policy – including a focus on the growing strand of critical studies on governing and policy. In doing this, the chapter also demonstrates the analytical merit of a governmentality framework when focusing on the political implications of the ethics discourse. Hence, the chapter focuses on what ethics ‘does’ with and in policy, and what the political implications of these ‘doings’ are. 

Both early and more contemporary feminist utopias and dystopias present us with alternatives that are both disruptive and transgressive of the existing order, making us aware of the unequal power relations embodied in society that interlock in producing urban space and the subjectivities available to women and other ‘Others’. They highlight the normalizations of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity in the city that produce some bodies as ‘normal’ and ‘in place’ and others as ‘out of place’. We discuss the possibilities these utopian/dystopian imaginings reveal for what feminist urban spaces can be, challenging taken-for-granted power relations, hierarchies and systems of exclusion/inclusion. Finally, we consider how envisaging feminist utopias and/or dystopias encourages thinking outside the box and offers a way of contesting dominant discourses: how, by developing a critical approach to what exists, such imaginings may open up changing cities physically, emotionally, environmentally and democratically by picturing (an)other future city. 

In this chapter we present a broad overview of research on what we call the politics of automated systems of governing (ASG). We define such systems as the enlisting of algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and various utilizations of so called ‘big data’ with the purpose to control, direct, steer or guide something or someone. Drawing on selective parts of a larger systematic review of 1667 peer-reviewed scholarly works dealing with politics in relation to big data, AI and algorithms, we illustrate two things. First, by taking stock of this literature we show its context as we reconstruct seven major themes from a wide range of topics through which scholars investigate ASG. Second, we theorize how the notion of politics can be said to operate along three dimensions as researchers mobilize the concept in relation to ASG across the seven themes, namely politics as ontology, epistemology and ideology.

The public sector and public administrations are important foundations in democratic states and an autonomous public sector that protects public principles is needed for a political system to be democratically legitimate. Here, efficiency, impartiality, equality, and transparency are central guiding principles and values. The introduction of automated decision-making (ADM) in the public sector affects traditional public principles and values in several ways. For example, transparency is a central challenge as the decisions are implemented by algorithms instead of humans and thus become more difficult to explain for the individual citizen. Also, equality has been put forward both as something that is gained through ADM, and as something that is at risk when ADM is implemented. This chapter provides an overview of the challenges that the implementation of ADM brings to the public sector, including transformations of public sector decisions, the discretion of civil servants, and democratic principles and values.

Over the past few decades, Sweden has established itself as a "world leader" in gender equality. Alongside this development, Swedish politicians have also initiated ambitious plans that aim to establish the country as "world class" in terms of digitalization. International research shows that women and racialized groups are in a minority in the design processes, that AI facial recognition systems are built with white male faces as the norm, and that digital tools replicate racial injustices. In this paper, we are interested in if, and if so how, gender equality is articulated and thus filled with meaning in national policies on AI and digitalization. The overall aim is to discuss the potential of gender (equality) mainstreaming to challenge systems of privilege in the implementation of AI systems in the public sector. The paper analyses how gender equality is filled with meaning in national policy documents on AI and gender equality. The main findings show that gender equality is turned into a question of lack of knowledge and information, which in turn blocks out an understanding of gender equality as something that is related to gendered power relations.

In this paper, we develop an approach for analyzing the increasingly important strand of research that deals with automated systems of governing. Such systems, which figure prominently in public policy and regulation, are designed to utilize the rapid advancement in computer technology, like artificial intelligence, with the purpose of governing something or someone. Drawing on a large sample of articles we present a comprehensive analysis of scholarly works where these systems are studied as political, rather than neutral, instruments of governing. We find that the current state of the art articulates the politics of automated systems of governing in three ways. Namely, as part of ontological, epistemological and ideological questions. We conclude that future research should investigate the complex forms of marketization nested in these systems, that it should move from theoretical examples to detailed empirical studies and that political science should get more involved with the issue.

City-centric planning in Sweden has led to the dominance of stereotyped visions for both urban and rural areas within policy and planning practice. To challenge such a limited understanding, this study conceptualizes the rurban void. The aim of this article is to operationalize the rurban void as an analytical framework that extends beyond the urban and rural conceptual divide and can clarify how a neoliberal and city-centric planning practice in Sweden de-politicizes the urban and rural outside. The article discusses the potentials of a perspective that challenges urban privilege and opens up opportunities for the re-politicisation of spatial transformation. 

Denna rapport är en populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning av en vetenskaplig artikel vars publicering möjliggjorts av stöd från MUCF. Artikeln tar sitt avstamp i den långtgående ”projektifiering” som präglar styrning och organisering av såväl offentlig sektor som civilsamhället. I artikeln studeras projektifieringens effekter särskilt med avseende på hur kvinnoorganisationer påverkas av att arbeta i projektform. Genom att följa hur ett flertal kvinnoorganisationer interagerar med projektformens livsfaser – ansökningsfasen, implementerings- och rapporteringsfasen samt utvärderingsfasen – framgår hur dessa lägger ned ett omfattande arbete för att anpassa och översätta sin egen verksamhet i relation till projektformens särskilda krav. Detta arbete präglas av en anpassning till en teknokratisk logik vilket avpolitiserar den feministiska aktivism som kvinnoorganisationer ägnar sig åt. Projektformens effekter för hur politiskt arbete i civilsamhället bedrivs bör därför noggrant beaktas.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation have become an integral part of public governance. While digitaltechnology is expected to enhance neutrality and accuracy in decision-making, it raises concerns about the statusof public values and democratic principles. Guided by the theoretical concepts of input, throughput and outputdemocracy, this article analyses how democratic principles have been interpreted and defended in EU policyformulations relating to digital technology over the last decade. The emergence of AI policy has changed theconditions for democratic input and throughput legitimacy, which is an expression of a shift in power and in-fluence between public and private sectors. Democratic input values in AI production are promoted by ethicalguidelines directed towards the industry, while democratic throughput, e.g., accountability and transparency,receive less attention in EU AI policy. This indicates future political implications for the ability of citizens toinfluence technological change and pass judgement on accountable actors.

As an organisational form, the project poses a challenge today for the possibility of articulating feminist politics, understood as feminist visions and ambitions. With a focus on women’s organisations working in international development aid, we examine how the project format and its managerial attributes shape the possibility of articulating feminist politics. Mobilising assemblage thinking on a material consisting mainly of interviews with project workers in women’s organisations, we show that these organisations engage in assembly work to fit their activism with the project format, such as translating feminist ambitions into bureaucratic procedures and notions of temporality, activating repertoires of expertise, and adopting marketised approaches to development. We conclude that the project format depoliticises feminist politics, although it does not make the articulation of feminist ambitions impossible. Assemblage thinking is suggested as a suitable framework for feminist research when investigating how contemporary governing arrangements influence the articulation of feminist politics.