AI

Digital Limit Situations: Anticipatory Media Beyond 'The New AI Era'

ABSTRACT

In the present age AI (artificial intelligence) emerges as both a medium to and message about (or even from) the future, eclipsing all other possible prospects. Discussing how AI succeeds in presenting itself as an arrival on the human horizon at the end times, this theoretical essay scrutinizes the ‘inevitability’ of AI-driven abstract futures and probes how such imaginaries become living myths, by attending how the technology is embedded in broader appropriations of the future tense. Reclaiming anticipation existentially, by drawing and expanding on the philosophy of Karl Jaspers – and his concept of the limit situation – I offer an invitation beyond the prospects and limits of ‘the new AI Era’ of predictive modelling, exploitation and dataism. I submit that the present moment of technological transformation and of escalating multi-faceted and interrelated global crises, is a digital limit situation in which there are entrenched existential and politico-ethical stakes of anticipatory media. Attending to them as a ‘future present’ (Adam and Groves 2007, 2011), taking responsible action, constitutes our utmost capability and task. The essay concludes that precisely here lies the assignment ahead for pursuing a post-disciplinary, integrative and generative form of Humanities and Social Sciences as a method of hope, that engages AI designers in the pursuit of an inclusive and open future of existential and ecological sustainability.

A Book Review of ‘Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism’

ABSTRACT

Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism by Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen, and James Steinhoff is part of the Digital Barricades series that addresses concerns in the nexus of digital media, geopolitics, and political economy. In this wider context, Inhuman Capital assesses the relationship of AI and capitalism with a twofold purpose. On an empirical level, the book surveys the current state of AI research and development while, on a theoretical level, it explores in depth the utility of Marxist thought toward an analysis of a capitalist project beyond and without human involvement. Despite their unambiguous ideological leanings, the authors’ deliberate situating of the work among literature in the discourse, the attention to underlying political economies, and a detailed overview of AI technologies - and this can be said at the outset of the review - are certain to broaden the prospective readership of Inhuman Power beyond academic circles.