Luciana Nunes Nacif
Luciana Nunes Nacif is a postdoctoral researcher in Philosophy at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from UFMG, which included a research internship at the Université Panthéon Sorbonne, undertaken through the CAPES/COFECUB Programme. She completed a Master’s in Global Fashion Management from the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM-Paris) and a Bachelor’s in Social Communication from UFMG. She is a member of the research groups ‘Modes of Presence in Contemporary Aesthetic Phenomena’ (CNPq) and ‘REDD: Network for Studies on Democracy and Disinformation’ (IEAT - UFMG). Her research is at the intersection between philosophy, technology and fashion.
Articles of Luciana Nunes Nacif
The Generative AI Factory
This article examines generative artificial intelligence not as a disembodied, cloud based phenomenon, but as a planetary factory. It is a vast and material infrastructure rooted in geological extraction, logistical networks, and asymmetrical labor relations. Drawing on Vilém Flusser's premise that to decipher an era one must decode its factories, the analysis traces the production chain of contemporary AI across multiple sites. These include rare earth mining, semiconductor manufacturing, data centers, submarine cables, surveillance systems, and space colonization. The text also presents the art pieces of Trevor Paglen and Elisa Giardina Papa to shed light on two crucial matters: how humans are being trained by AI systems, and what invisible infrastructures support the entire edifice. Beneath what appears as immediate and seamless mediation lies a complex metabolic process of ingestion, digestion, excretion, and re-ingestion of data. This is a logic that Kate Crawford terms the "metabolic image." The article concludes that the AI factory is not an inescapable fate. Rather, it is the crystallization of specific political and economic choices. Demystifying its material and operational logic is a necessary condition for reclaiming human agency, imagining alternative futures, and reopening the apertures that, in Flusser's warning, are rapidly closing off.