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：人工智能工程是一项构建世界的宏大事业，其中资助和开发AI系统的各方既通过权力与财富网络运作，又力求维系这一网络。随着他们扩大资源获取渠道并重塑我们的社会技术条件，一系列"干扰项"促使学者、评论家、政策制定者、记者及公众共同参与构建有利于产业发展的AI未来，他们从中获益。无论这些干扰项由谁构建或培育，它们往往制造出问责制的假象，既掩盖了人工智能工程所催生的新兴政治经济形态，又助长了作为该工程攫取与剥削核心的网络构建权力。通过借鉴传播学、科学技术研究及经济社会学交叉领域的文献，我们考察了人工智能工程的构建方式。随后，我们探讨了看似批判、实则共同构成AI新兴权力关系与物质政治经济形态的五种干扰项。我们认为，推进AI领域具有实质意义的公平性或问责制，需要：1）识别干扰项何时并如何形成干扰；2）直面人工智能工程的物质政治经济形态。唯有如此，我们才能关注使"人工智能"成为可能的权力网络，激发新的愿景，以构建一个更加公正的技术交织世界。