Open Collections

Abstract

This thesis explores the presence of caste in the rhetoric of consciousness and intelligence of Artificial Intelligence as it prevails in current discourse. It explores the specific language being used to ascribe consciousness to AI, and the process of deifying the technology through positioning it as a being of higher intelligence and higher consciousness. This language, the thesis posits, draws on, both directly and indirectly, from the Hindu philosophical framework of Advaita, or non-dualism. Key players in the AI industry too draw from Advaita, and by extension the Indian caste system, to construct a specific deification of AI. By mapping out the relationship between caste, Advaita, and the religious rhetoric in AI discourse, the thesis constructs a Brahmanical AI dispositif as a heterogenous system comprising this discursive element in tandem with non-discursive systems of exploitation and racial capitalism. The thesis employs dispositif analysis by examining both the prevailing discourse as well as the biographical profiles of three key figures in the development of AI – Sam Altman, Aravind Srinivas, and Elon Musk to make visible the unique role caste plays in the current discourse. Constructing a dispositif based on Foucault’s idea of a dispositif as a heterogenous assemblage of structures, objects, and relationships that work towards a particular goal, the Brahmanical AI dispositif also functions similarly. The thesis maps out the goal of this rhetoric, along with other material processes that sustain AI as an industry, as being one of attempting to naturalise a transhumanist and eugenicist vision of AI in the vision of caste and global whiteness.