, officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were assigned to clear a road occupied by protesters that was to be used as a route for departing delegates attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at the University of British Columbia (UBC). They did so by dispensing significant quantities of pepper spray on peaceful individuals, including a cameraman covering the event for CBC news. The resulting footage was broadcast repeatedly throughout Canada in the following years, fueling a negative perception of these police actions, which were later deemed unnecessary and unlawful by an official inquiry (Canada, 2002). Such scenes contrast heavily with the events surrounding the G8 conference held in 2002 in the mountains outside of Calgary, Alberta. Protesters occupied city streets, chanting, drumming, and playing soccer, while police stood back and directed traffic (Independent Media Center, 2002a). Violent confrontations were avoided, and media portrayals applauded the actions of both police and protesters (CBC News, 2002; Reid, 2002; Remington, 2002). Paying close attention to the spatial dimension of protest can further our understanding of events like these. While the claims made by the protesters at international summits such as APEC, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the G8 concern issues such as justice, globalization, and development, the protests themselves are typically carried out in contested space. The street, the conference hall, or the university campus becomes both the site and the stake of contentious interactions between protesters and police. While the outcome of this process may have little direct impact on the political achievements of the summits themselves, it may result in media-driven accounts that carry significant social and political implications, particularly when protester^police interactions are marked by a high level of violence. The fallout of these clashes, such as those that occurred during the 1997 APEC conference, can influence subsequent actions by police and protesters, redefining the dynamics of contemporary protest policing.

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist's view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways that inequality is continually reproduced in society -processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of conservative approaches to class, gender, and racial bias are discussed as specific examples, along with the social structures and processes that biases in these areas are linked to. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for radical alternatives.

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