Beazley Designs of the Year 2019 - Winner - Anatomy of an AI System

An anatomical case study of the Amazon Echo as an artificial intelligence system made of human labour, data and planetary resources.

Taking a consumer’s conversation with Alexa, Amazon’s voice-activated assistant, as its starting point, designers and researchers Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler created a map and essay to represent the impact of the creation, use and disposal of just one of the many Amazon Echo units that have been purchased to date..