Re-enchanted by AuroraAI

AI Policy and its Implementation in Finland

Abstract

In 2020, Finland launched its own national Artificial Intelligence (AI) program called AuroraAI. The goal of the program was to develop a more human-centric approach to public and private services using AI. AuroraAI was conceptualized as a type of AI assistant for citizens, which would help improve the human condition and at the same time help alleviate the financial burden of the state through more efficient service provision and empowering individuals. Using the notion of “enchanted determinism” developed by Campolo and Crawford (2020) I explore the ambiguous position that Finland’s national AI program occupied within contemporary discourses of technological progress and development. I explore the operation of AuroraAI as a platform for public service development through two examples. First, I look at visual representation of the operation of AuroraAI, and second, how AI was envisioned to provide insight for self-improvement. The two examples provide insights of how the logic of AuroraAI was conceptualized as a type of Master Algorithm (Domingos, 2015) that would have embodied many of the characteristics that Campolo and Crawford have described as re-enchantment. AuroraAI’s approach to the use of AI was a mixture of modernist and positivist thinking infused with visions of imagined capabilities attributed to AI.