AI for Whose Good?
Lessons from Community Resistance to Automation at the Port of Los Angeles

By Sophie Wang and Taylor M. Cruz

This critical zine examines artificial intelligence (AI) and automation across Greater Los Angeles, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of public engagement events in the LA Harbor Area and Silicon Beach. It shares the direct words of people impacted by AI systems at the Port of LA through the personal and political lenses of the authors and creators. We share this free community-oriented zine to use the resources and power we have to amplify and support organizing, bring the knowledge generated by the community to a conversation that hasn’t thought to include them, and broaden the audience that knows about the fight. We hope you find it useful in widening consideration of AI and automation to include matters of power, inequality, and social justice.

This community-oriented project on AI/ML is a proud collaboration between Sophie Wang, co-founder of Free Radicals, and Taylor M. Cruz, Associate Professor of Sociology.

There are a couple of ways you can read this zine:

  1. Scroll down! It’s available to read in full on this page.

  2. Download a free PDF of the zine HERE. You can print it out and share it! If you’d like to assemble your own hard copy, open in Adobe Acrobat and print as a Booklet (see option under Page Sizing and Handling). Fold the printed pages in half, staple or bind, and enjoy!

  3. If you’d like to support the creators and purchase a hard copy of the zine, you can do so HERE.

AI For Whose Good?

Additional Resources (clickable!)

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and Free Radicals. 2020. “The Algorithmic Ecology: An Abolitionist Tool for Organizing Against Algorithms.” Medium.
(Available at https://stoplapdspying.medium.com/the-algorithmic-ecology-an-abolitionist-tool-for-organizing-against-algorithms-14fcbd0e64d0).

Sociology of Artificial Intelligence. Joyce, Kelly, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Sharla Alegria, Susan E. Bell, Taylor M. Cruz, Steve G. Hoffman, Safiya Umoja Noble, and Benjamin Shestakofsky. 2021. “Toward a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Research on Inequalities and Structural Change.” Socius 7: 1-11. (Available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023121999581).

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, under the leadership of Alondra Nelson. 2022. “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People.” The White House. (Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/).