Speaker: Mathew Zook

Institution: University of Oxford

Date: 14:00 GMT, 16th April, 2026

Talk Title: The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of the silicon gaze to explain how large language models (LLMs) reproduce and amplify long-standing spatial inequalities. Drawing on a 20.3-million-query audit of ChatGPT, we map systematic biases in the model’s representations of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods. From these empirics, we argue that bias is not a correctable anomaly but an intrinsic feature of generative AI, rooted in historically uneven data ecologies and design choices. Building on a power-aware, relational approach, we develop a five-part typology of bias (availability, pattern, averaging, trope, and proxy) that accounts for the complex ways in which LLMs privilege certain places while rendering others invisible.

Bio: Matthew Zook is a University Research Professor and Roger DiSilvestro Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky focused on Digital, Economic and Urban Geographies. His work blends critical theories drawn from STS, data/software studies and heterodox economics and uses socially-grounded, technical methods (such as audits of data structures, algorithms and larger digital systems) combined with qualitative methodologies to analyze the evolving spatialities of urban practices, representation and economic/financial activity. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of open access Sage journal, Big Data & Society and a co-editor for Progress in Economic Geography Elsevier.