Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjosen and James Steinhoff. Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism. London: Pluto Press, 2019. viii 210 pp. ISBN: 9780745338606. £16.99

Abstract

Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, written by Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjosen, and James Steinhoff, offers a salient probe to re-examine the multi-layered nature of artificial intelligence. Contrary to the naive approach, which treats AI as a neutral and independent technological/scientific development, the study considers it as a phenomenon that penetrates various economic, social, and cultural structures and has the potential to transform them radically. It cultivates a comprehensive and deep approach to grasping the overlooked aspects of the knotty and vibrant relationship between AI and social processes by drawing and reinterpreting critical concepts of Marxist theory such as surplus value, labour power, relations of production and surplus-population. Furthermore, as its title underscores, aside from the implications of the current and limited AIs, the book also makes room for the authors' staid and rigorous assumptions about what shape it will take in the future and how it will relate to the metabolism of the capitalism.