The Project of AI is a world-building endeavor, wherein those who fund and develop AI systems both operate through and seek to sustain networks of power and wealth. As they expand their access to resources and configure our sociotechnical conditions, they benefit from the ways in which a suite of decoys animate scholars, critics, policymakers, journalists, and the public into co-constructing industry-empowering AI futures. Regardless of who constructs or nurtures them, these decoys often create the illusion of accountability while both masking the emerging political economies that the Project of AI has set into motion, and also contributing to the network-making power that is at the heart of the Project's extraction and exploitation. Drawing on literature at the intersection of communication, science and technology studies, and economic sociology, we examine how the Project of AI is constructed. We then explore five decoys that seemingly critique - but in actuality co-constitute - AI's emergent power relations and material political economy. We argue that advancing meaningful fairness or accountability in AI requires: 1) recognizing when and how decoys serve as a distraction, and 2) grappling directly with the material political economy of the Project of AI. Doing so will enable us to attend to the networks of power that make 'AI' possible, spurring new visions for how to realize a more just technologically entangled world.

翻译：人工智能项目是一场构建世界的宏大工程，其资助与开发者既通过权力与财富网络运作，又致力于维系这类网络。当它们扩大资源获取渠道并重塑我们的社会技术条件时，一系列迷障正促使学者、批评者、政策制定者、记者及公众共同参与构建赋能产业的人工智能未来，而人工智能项目正从中获益。无论这些迷障由谁构建或培育，它们往往营造出问责制的假象，既掩盖了人工智能项目所引发的崭新政治经济格局，又助长了作为该项目掠夺与剥削核心的网络构建权力。本文借鉴传播学、科学技术研究与经济社会学交叉领域的文献，探讨人工智能项目如何被构建。进而剖析五重迷障——它们看似批判实则共同构建了人工智能新兴的权力关系与物质性政治经济。我们主张，要在人工智能领域推进有意义的公平或问责制，必须做到：1）认清迷障在何时以何种方式起到干扰作用，2）直面人工智能项目的物质性政治经济。唯有如此，我们才能直视使"人工智能"成为可能的权力网络，为构建更公平的技术纠缠世界催生新愿景。