Hannah Arendt
philosopher · 3 mentions across 3 readings
In this course
Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" anchors debates in the seminar about how systemic harm emerges not from dramatic villainy but from bureaucratic routinization—a framework the readings apply to understand how contemporary AI systems perpetuate violence through mundane processes of classification and labor extraction. Her analysis of totalitarianism and the psycho-social costs of ideological consistency also provides political-philosophical grounding for examining how automated systems enforce conformity across both authoritarian and democratic contexts. The readings invoke her to trouble the assumption that evil requires exceptional actors, suggesting instead that algorithmic systems and the invisible workers training them represent new instantiations of the problems Arendt diagnosed in mid-twentieth-century state apparatuses.
Background
Hannah Arendt was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.
Wikipedia →Mentioned in 3 readings
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