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Automation and autonomy : labour, capital and machines in the artificial intelligence industry / James Steinhoff.

Steinhoff, James, author.
2021
HC79.I55 S74 2021
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Title
Automation and autonomy : labour, capital and machines in the artificial intelligence industry / James Steinhoff.
Author
Steinhoff, James, author.
ISBN
9783030716899 (electronic bk.)
3030716899 (electronic bk.)
3030716880
9783030716882
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71689-9
Published
Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2021]
Copyright
©2021
Language
English
Description
1 online resource : illustrations.
Item Number
10.1007/978-3-030-71689-9 doi
Call Number
HC79.I55 S74 2021
Dewey Decimal Classification
303.48/33
Summary
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. James Steinhoff is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed July 9, 2021).
Series
Marx, Engels, and Marxisms.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783030716882
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1. Introduction: Automation, Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence
2. Labour, Capital, Machine: Marxist Theory and Technology
3. Post-Operaismo and the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour
4. Industrializing Intelligence: A Political Economic History of the AI Industry
5. Machine Learning and Fixed Capital: The Contemporary AI Industry
6. A Dark Art: The Machine Learning Labour Process
7. New Autonomy and Work in the AI Industry
8. Conclusion: Harry Braverman Overdrive.

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