AI as justification devices: wellbeing and the datafied world in the Chilean context

On recent years, various calculative devices based on algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence (AI), have facilitated the quantification and reinterpretation of diverse concepts, such as wellbeing. In this context, we examine a Chilean start-up that aims to promote the well-being of companies’ employees by fostering healthy habits, encouraging social donations, and ensuring financial security, along with managing employee benefits for their clients. At the core of their business lies their smartphone application, through which these dimensions are both measured and modified, as well as the different AI models that inform their recommendation systems and analytics. In this paper, we investigate the production of a definition of well-being within these emerging business models through interviews with key members of the organization and conducting an ethnographic study of the platform. We propose that both AI and well-being function as rhetorical devices, serving as capture mechanisms for capital, partners, clients, and users, thus enabling the platform to operate successfully. Taking from Boltanski and Thévenot regimes of justification, we argue that the role of AI in such assemblages surpasses its calculative capabilities and instead serves as a rhetorical device of conscription, framed through and for the Global North.