AI governance

Governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) primarily deals with the immaterial aspects of AI: software, data and algorithms, and language models. Yet, the sociomaterial components of AI (semiconductor materials, critical minerals mining, data centers, and labour) have been strikingly absent from policy discourses. At the same time, narratives being put forth by the public and private sectors exaggerate AI as a green solution, obscuring its environmental impact and further obfuscating the relationship between AI and its materiality.

To bring materiality back into AI governance, I propose to look at the case of Indonesia as a salient and understudied context for governing AI. A comprehensive national policy analysis will be conducted on Indonesia's unique sociomaterial landscape to uncover the (dis)connection between the governance of AI and materiality. On the one hand, Indonesia's "_Semiconductor and AI_" and "_Hilirisasi_" (downstreaming) roadmaps lay out an ambitious vision for its technological sovereignty. On the other hand, unrestricted mining and unmitigated technical developments bring ecological disasters and sustainability issues. This disjuncture provides ground for a resource politics and political ecology analysis that allows us to see how AI governance continues to be divorced from its materiality.