Artificial intelligence (AI) is not only powering search engines, chatbots, and image generators, but it is also increasingly integrated into global production and labour processes across a number of industries. How can Marxist understandings of labour, capital and value help us shed light on these transformations? In their 2019 book Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, scholars Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjosen and James Steinhoff deploy Marxist insights to answer this question. They highlight the need to consider the challenges that AI poses for contemporary Marxist theory, as well as engage with the question of what a socialist agenda for tackling the growing power of AI may look like.

In this seminar, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjosen and James Steinhoff are joined by Tongyu Wu to discuss the main arguments of Inhuman Power, along with their more recent findings.

This is an online event.

SPEAKERS

Nick Dyer-Witheford is a Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He is the co- author of Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis (Verso, 2025).

Atle Mikkola Kjøsen is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He researches the circulation process of capital, currently with a focus on metrology, and the economic agency of smart consumer appliances.

James Steinhoff is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. He is the author of Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the AI Industry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

Tongyu Wu is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University. She is the author of Play to Submission: Gaming Capitalism in a Tech Firm (Temple University Press, 2024). Currently, she is investigating China’s AI development, focusing on the data annotation industry.