Hello everyone, Apologies for emailing in quick succession. I have been informed that the previous mail did not allow for the attachment to be carried. Please find the text below. Do consider sending an abstract if this Call resonates with your work. *Call For Abstracts* *Critical Political Economy of AI: Southern Experiences* Recent uptake of Generative AI tools has brought to the fore conversations on the usefulness and downsides of applications like ChatGPT. Reports on the deployment of cheap labour at firms housed in Asia, Africa and Latin America to clean and feed datasets for the training of these AI systems are steadily streaming in (Williams et al, 2022). Such global patterns of the extraction of transnational labour and distribution of resources are not new. They have been studied in the context of the outsourcing of technology and business processes (Chandrasekhar, 2005), content moderation services (Gillespie et al, 2020) and ghost work (Gray and Suri, 2019). Further, research in recent years has showcased how machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are prone to accentuating inequities *already existing* in societies, through black-box training of datasets laden with biases that reflect such societal imbalances (Buolamwini and Gebru, 2018). All these inequities are premised on extant disparities along patriarchal, racialised, eugenicised, casteist, regional, economic and ableist lines that then get amplified by selective design and implementation of these technologies. This Call For Abstracts seeks to engage with perspectives that interrogate and provide scholarly vocabulary and lenses to understand these developments in the field of machine learning and AI technologies, as they implicate our political, economic, social and cultural lives. In doing so, this edited collection aims to present a Critical Political Economy approach to the study of ML and AI technologies, highlighting inequities and emphasising the radical reimagination of alternatives (Wigger, 2022). Over the past few years, there have been efforts in the fields of Sociology and Communication to develop and underscore the theoretical framework of a Southern Standpoint (Go, 2016; Raghunath, forthcoming) to understand situated experiences of historical and current marginalities as a means to underscore and draw attention to the multifarious forms of colonisation, both *between *and *within *societies. This Call focuses on *Southern experiences* along aforementioned lines, as perpetuated or mitigated by these technologies. By drawing on this conceptualisation of a Southern Standpoint as a possible way of exploring situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988) and experiences (Frie, 2011) of these technologies, this Call seeks to ask the following questions: How can we draw up a critical political economy of ML and AI technologies while these developments are currently underway across the globe? How do these technologies perpetuate or mitigate existing inequities in intra-regional, national and societal contexts, and who benefits? How can we implicate publicness as a desired ideal that can hold proponents of these technologies to account? Finally, how does the cooption of efforts in mitigating inequities take place, and how can we work collectively to redress them? The scope of themes include but are not limited to: - Inequities and disparities in society, along patriarchal, racialised, eugenicised, casteist, regional, economic and ableist lines perpetuated by ML and AI technologies - Geopolitical and regional lenses to the study the extraction and flow of resources that power the building, promotion and access to these technologies - External, internal and multifarious forms of colonisation that draw on similar such existing structures of domination and amplify inequities in the context of these technologies - Potential and possibilities of ML and AI technologies in mitigating inequities - Rights-restoring frameworks, anti-/de-colonial and Southern approaches that help envisage ethical, collective, sustainable technology futures - Public initiatives aimed at critical education to implement such frameworks and approaches Please email your abstracts to *preetimalaraghunath@gmail.com <preetimalaraghunath@gmail.com>* by May 7, 2023. This edited collection could take the form of a special issue for a journal or an edited book project, efforts for which are currently underway. *About the editor*: Dr. Preeti Raghunath is an incoming Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her current work is focused on inequities (policies and practices) pertaining to Data and AI technologies. She is particularly interested in the histories and situatedness of data-centric practices. Many thanks, Preeti -- Preeti Raghunath, PhD Website: www.preetiraghunath.com Twitter: @preetiraghunath