Prof. dr. Regine Paul "Beyond the hype: a global political economy view of AI transformation(s)"
The public discourse on artificial intelligence (AI) features a vocal battle between upbeat hopes for increasing levels of prosperity and global equality versus more alarming visions of massive losses of jobs and income, increasing inequality, and an unparalleled concentration of wealth and political power. For political economists (and critically-minded citizens) scepticism towards such grand narratives about a bifurcated global AI transformation is apt for at least four reasons: they downplay the role of political agency of states and institutions in navigating technological innovation and its effects; they obscure the powerful role of discourses and tech imaginaries in mobilising regulatory, fiscal and other politico-economic action; they nourish and are themselves fed by an intensifying geopolitical race to AI among a few global superpowers and their superrich tech business elites who display little consideration for the wellbeing of most people on this planet; and they are particularly inattentive to the unevenness of AI-fication processes within and between sectors, workplaces, or countries across the globe.
Based on the forthcoming book The AI Matrix: Profits, Power, Politics (co-authored with Daniel Mügge and Vali Stan), Regine Paul will introduce a conceptual-analytical compass for navigating the global political economy of AI transformations in her talk. Inspired by critical political economy and economic geography, they contend that while an overarching beam of extraction, exploitation, and politico-economic concentration (with the US and China as epicentres) unites experiences of AI development and deployment across the globe, its refraction through the prism of variable institutional settings, tech-related discourses, geopolitical manoeuvres, but also local agency and resistance yields various connected yet specific articulations of global AI transformation(s).
This event is part of the Politics of Proof in the Digital Age research group, a research group of Gloknos Center for Global Knowledge Studies: all are welcome to join!
Contact: m.a.campbell-verduyn rug.nl