CONCEPT
The Politics of Interpretation
The invisible layer of power in AI systems: the system interprets the user's intention through its embedded priorities, and the user evaluates the output without ever seeing the interpretation that produced it.
The politics of interpretation names a specific mechanism through which the technical code operates in AI systems. When a user describes her intention in natural language, the system must interpret that description — filling gaps, resolving ambiguities, making contextual assumptions about what the user wants. The inference is not transparent. The user does not see the interpretive process. She sees only the result — the code that compiles, the text that coheres, the analysis that appears to address her question. She can evaluate the output. She cannot evaluate the interpretation, because the interpretation is concealed behind the smooth surface of the result. The entity that controls interpretation controls meaning — and in AI systems, the entity that controls interpretation is the designer who configured the system's priorities, not the user who expressed the intention.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The analogy Feenberg draws is to the legal system: when a court interprets a statute, the interpretation becomes