[Commlist] New Book: Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry

New book
Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial 
Intelligence Industry

Abstract:
This book argues that Marxist theory is essential for understanding the 
contemporary industrialization of the form of artificial intelligence 
(AI) called machine learning. It includes a political economic history 
of AI, tracking how it went from a fringe research interest for a 
handful of scientists in the 1950s to a centerpiece of cybernetic 
capital fifty years later. It also includes a political economic study 
of the scale, scope and dynamics of the contemporary AI industry as well 
as a labour process analysis of commercial machine learning software 
production, based on interviews with workers and management in AI 
companies around the world, ranging from tiny startups to giant 
technology firms. On the basis of this study, Steinhoff develops a 
Marxist analysis to argue that the popular theory of immaterial labour, 
which holds that information technologies increase the autonomy of 
workers from capital, tending towards a post-capitalist economy, does 
not adequately describe the situation of high-tech digital labour today. 
In the AI industry, digital labour remains firmly under the control of 
capital. Steinhoff argues that theories discerning therein an emergent 
autonomy of labour are in fact witnessing labour’s increasing automation.

Link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71689-9 
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71689-9>
Automation and Autonomy | SpringerLink 
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71689-9>
This book argues that Marxist theory is essential for understanding the 
contemporary industrialization of the form of artificial intelligence 
(AI) called machine learning. It includes a political econ
link.springer.com


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