Separating AI’s Technological Problems From its Capitalism Problems

The Next Great Divergence: How AI could split the world again if we don’t intervene | Brookings

Michael Muthukrishna and Philip Schellekens argue that AI, like past general-purpose technologies, could drive a new global divergence unless deliberate action ensures its benefits are broadly shared rather than geographically concentrated.

What we can’t measure about AI – yet | Aeon Essays

The costs of transformative innovations are immediately clear: it’s the longterm gains that are hardest to understand

A Real Political Economy of Technology - The Ideas Letter

Two technological futures are competing for political and material priority: generative AI and the green transition. Benanav argues that while AI is marketed as a world-reordering breakthrough, its productivity gains…

AI Commons - One Project

What if we could redefine AI? What if we could shift its development from a capitalist model to a more disruptive, inclusive, and decentralized one?

OpenAI Calls for New Industrial Policy as AI Reshapes Economy and Governance

OpenAI’s policy paper argues that governments must adopt a new industrial policy to manage AI’s economic disruption.

Designing AI for Disruptive Science

Why scaling AI won’t automatically lead to paradigm shifts.

AI as Social Technology

Our debates about ‘AI’ grow out of 1990s science fiction. Back then, Vinge (1993) wrote essays and novels urging us to face up to the oncoming “Singularity”: a moment of rapid change that would fundamentally transform the human condition. On that day, AI would rapidly evolve from merely human-level intelligence, what some now call ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI), into something super-intelligent with its own interests and goals. Humanity would then either be casually eliminated by out-of-control machines, or humans would become as gods, with super-human servitors at our command.

Bridging the gap: inequalities that divide those who can and cannot create sustainable outcomes with AI

The widespread use of AI technologies impacts individuals, organisations, and societies in ways that warrant more comprehensive investigation. Inequalities in benefiting from AI advancements may le...

Import AI 452: Scaling laws for cyberwar; rising tides of AI automation; and a puzzle over gDP forecasting

How much could AI revolutionize the economy?

AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum

This paper treats AI as diagnostic for the deeper changes taking place in the existing order of things. It uses AI's alignment with both the political economy and with the dualisms that underpin it, including race, gender and anthropocentrism, to highlight the nihilistic character of the current restructuring. AI's scaling and accelerationism are taken as examples of the wider tactics being invoked by hegemonic power to maintain control under changing conditions. From this perspective, the massive build-out of data centres isn't simply a seizure of energy resources but a manifestation of an aggressive and misogynist technopolitics. The paper argues that a liberal push for digital sovereignty doesn't interrupt these dynamics but plays into the hands of emerging technofascism. It proposes instead the prefigurative tactic of 'decomputing', which draws on degrowth, deautomatisation and a convivial approach to technology. It explores decomputing as a means to mitigate both material and relational harms and as a decisive turn towards infrastructuring the common good. The paper concludes that AI is the contradiction that reveals many others, not least the gap between claims to legitimacy and the actuality of destructive violence, and proposes an alternative technopolitics of reciprocity that prioritises care and sustainability.

AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum

This paper treats AI as diagnostic for the deeper changes taking place in the existing order of things. It uses AI's alignment with both the political economy and with the dualisms that underpin it, including race, gender and anthropocentrism, to highlight the nihilistic character of the current restructuring. AI's scaling and accelerationism are taken as examples of the wider tactics being invoked by hegemonic power to maintain control under changing conditions. From this perspective, the massive build-out of data centres isn't simply a seizure of energy resources but a manifestation of an aggressive and misogynist technopolitics. The paper argues that a liberal push for digital sovereignty doesn't interrupt these dynamics but plays into the hands of emerging technofascism. It proposes instead the prefigurative tactic of 'decomputing', which draws on degrowth, deautomatisation and a convivial approach to technology. It explores decomputing as a means to mitigate both material and relational harms and as a decisive turn towards infrastructuring the common good. The paper concludes that AI is the contradiction that reveals many others, not least the gap between claims to legitimacy and the actuality of destructive violence, and proposes an alternative technopolitics of reciprocity that prioritises care and sustainability.

Why the tech industry can't keep up with the AI backlash

AI's externalities are growing faster than the industry can address them

Techno-capitalism, Crisis Epistemology, and Disaster Ableism: How (not) to Respond to Generative AI in Higher education (My presentation @ #PhiDisSocCh6)

Introduction Techno-capitalism is a social system dominated by technology-driven capital, in which technological development is a primary vehicle for wealth concentration. Professors are currently …

Building Political Superintelligence

Amidst fears of dystopia, a blueprint for how we use AI to reinvent the way we govern ourselves