Infrastructure and its Discontents: Contestations of Power in Canada's AI Governance Scaffold

Abstract

This paper develops a critical theoretical framework for understanding national Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies through the lens of"Governance as Infrastructure."Integrating insights from Infrastructure Studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper employs Black Feminist Technoscience (BFTS) to reveal how AI governance infrastructures are assembled, maintained, and contested, and whose forms of knowledge, labour, and experience are rendered visible or invisible in these processes. We analyze the Canadian AI governance landscape through in-depth interviews with bureaucrats, civil society advocacy groups, academic researchers, and industry actors. Our inductive thematic analysis reveals how AI governance infrastructure enacts specific configurations of power, particularly through the politics of expertise; how actors navigate profound ambiguities related to AI's opacity, often involving strategic ignorance; and how mechanisms for justice and accountability struggle to address AI-related harms. We contend that a BFTS perspective highlights the limitations of current governance approaches and points toward alternative infrastructural designs prioritizing care, maintenance, participatory democracy, and adaptive temporalities to foster more equitable and accountable technology governance.