“We’re all dreaming AI”: Speculative Fantasies and Technologies of Desire in South African Policing

• In Event: Data-led and Digital Policing: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Within the pluralized policing landscape of South Africa, there is an increased use of technologies and digitalized media for the fundamental purpose of crime detection, prevention, proactive policing, and analysis. Amidst these technological advancements, artificial intelligence (AI) has become the new “buzzword” and there is a great amount of aspiration for the increased use of AI. Artificial intelligence is described as a solution to human-based problems that will provide abundant opportunities for more proactive policing. Yet at the same time, there is also a lack of knowledge on what AI is and how it operates. In this paper, I reflect on this paradox and discuss what ‘dreaming of AI’ reveals about perceptions of both technologies and security. I introduce the notion of ‘speculative fantasies’ to show that this ‘dreaming of AI’ is simultaneously a process of yearning as well as a mode of economic activity that produces certain capitalist ideas about the role of the private security industry in South Africa. This dreaming is not simply about fantasising about what is possible, but it is also about consolidating a particular capitalist project with certain power structures.

Author

• Tessa Diphoorn, Utrecht University