UW Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Specializations
Economics & Political Science, Ethnography & Communication
Biography
UW eScience Institute
Education History
Ph.D., Media Studies, The University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada)
M.A., Philosophy, The University of Windsor (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)
B.A., English Literature and Philosophy, The University of Windsor (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)
Research Goals
James is a postdoctoral fellow at the eScience Institute where he is working on an ongoing study of data science practice and culture with Anissa Tanweer. He is co-author of Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism (2019, Pluto Press). His research focuses on the political economy of the emergent artificial intelligence (AI) industry. He is interested in seeing how capital/labour relations in this industry present both continuities and differences from previous industries. He uses the AI industry as a case study to test the validity of theories of digital capitalism. In particular, he is interested in applying (and updating) the Labour Process Theory framework to analyze the production of AI and its automation with technologies such as automated machine learning (AutoML). He is currently preparing a monograph on the topic for Palgrave Macmillan. His next project will be a critical history of the diverse types of automation.