Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence

We live in a time when ever more pervasive forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are transforming our world. From quotidian applications such as generating audio-visual contents and responding to human’s queries to more intangible applications such as restructuring the labor market, speeding up extractive economic growth, and empowering surveillance and oppression on a mass scale, the potentials unleashed by AI are ready to upend our world. How are the shifts toward digital forms of production and exchange challenging the “laws” of supply and demand and other t political economic processes? How will the digitalization of nature intensify and transform the ways in which the commodification of nature has altered ecological systems? What will happen when AI saturates our political and economic life while it simultaneously depletes the planet? How will AI shape our understanding of ourselves and our societies? How do we, individually and collectively, grapple with ethical and existential issues that AI proliferation has raised and will continue to raise? Is it all too late, or is it merely a beginning? In this course students will approach these questions through the lens of political economy, which focuses on how the quest for power and profit has shaped the development and deployment of AI, and how AI applications, in turns, are disrupting and transforming our society and our planet. The course will draw on traditional methods of Political Economic analysis and tools from Futures Studies such as scenario building and the Delphi Method. Topics addressed may include, for instance: challenges in aligning AI systems with human values; open source vs. proprietary models of digital property; the implications of AI and other forms of digital powers for democracy, nation states, and global governance; transformations in labor markets and class structures; and debates over transhumanism and competing visions of technological futures. Our selection of key texts may include Gray Cox’s Smarter Planet or Wise Earth, Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI, and Nick Dyer-Witherford et al. ‘s Inhuman Power. The course is valuable for any students who want to investigate the development trajectory of AI and its predecessors, to engage critically with the impacts and contradictions of AI implementation, and to cultivate a creative imagination about the future of life and work when AI becomes ubiquitous. Upon completion of this course, you will have developed the abilities to: 1.) understand and explain key features of the emerging forms of AI and related technologies and their impacts on human ecological systems; 2.) use theoretical analyses and empirical evidence to critically engage with conflicting discourses from various political economic traditions regarding AI-related technologies; 3.) envision competing scenarios of the future with AI and critically analyze the conceptual and practical insights which they may offer.

Students will be evaluated through a combination of reading responses, in-class participation, short papers, and a final symposium in which students will present and debate their visions for the future political economy of AI and/or how AI will transform political economic systems around the world.