I’m an assistant professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. I’m interested in automation because discussions about it often tend towards ridiculous hyperbole or acritical boosterism. Whether it’s killer robots that terminate humanity or “ethical” AI which raises all boats, discussions about the social implications of contemporary machines often neglect to include the critical analysis of the capitalist mode of production. I don’t think the two can be studied in isolation from one another.
I wrote...
Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry
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. Steinhoff argues that theories discerning therein an emergent autonomy of labour are in fact witnessing labour’s increasing automation.
This is the most important book about capitalism ever written and also the most important book about how machines function under capitalism. While Capitalwas written before automation, the analysis of mechanization on display here draws together value, labour, and machines in a groundbreaking way that remains relevant today.
'A groundbreaking work of economic analysis. It is also a literary masterpice' Francis Wheen, Guardian
One of the most notorious and influential works of modern times, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis. Arguing that capitalism would cause an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership throughout the world,…
This book provides a linkage between Marx’s time and contemporary capitalism through an in-depth study of scientific management or Taylorism. Braverman shows that the essence of Taylorism, the capture, by capital, of the worker’s skills and knowledge, is a necessary precondition for automation. Automation, Braverman reveals, is not simply a technical process, but a deeply social one.
First published in 1974, this text is written in a direct way by Harry Braverman, whose years spent as an industrial worker gave him insight into the labour process and the conviction to reject the reigning wisdoms of academic sociology. Here, he analyzes the division of labour between the design and execution of industrial production, which underlies all our social arrangements. This new edition features a new introduction by John Bellamy Foster, setting the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two more articles by Harry Braverman.
Ramtin’s bizarrely underread book may be read as a sequel to Braverman. This is the first Marxist text to engage directly and in a sustained manner with the concept of automation. Automation is distinguished from mechanization, a history is provided, and great attention to technical detail is evident. Ramtin also explores the (contentious) argument that automation must ultimately lead to the collapse of capitalism.
The computer has already revolutionized many aspects of our working lives. How far has this revolution yet to run? Will human labour no longer be needed in the future? And if so, what will be the effect on the development of our society? Ramin Ramtin explores these questions in his study of the computer. He considers how the micro-chip may eventually have repercussions that go beyond easing the office work-load and argues convincingly that technological change will affect our political as well as our economic systems. Marxian theory is used to explain the nature and character of technology and challenge…
This book provides an essential analysis of how value functions under capital—and of what value is, from a lucid historical materialist point of view now called “value-form Marxism”. It shows how “real abstractions” arise, and how abstract entities can have material force. This theoretical perspective explains how and why capital is necessarily compelled to seek increasing automaticity—and to minimize its human component.
Alfred Sohn-Rethel's Intellectual and Manual Labour is one of the major texts of post-war Marxist theory. A tremendous influence on the central figures of the Frankfurt School, with ongoing relevance to current debates about value, abstraction, and domination, Sohn-Rethel's ideas are here presented at their fullest scope and with their greatest theoretical clarity.
Out of print for many years, this Historical Materialism edition contains a new introduction by Chris O'Kane, an afterword by Chris Arthur, and a compilation of the responses to Intellectual and Manual Labour published in the Italian journal Lotta Continua, including a substantial article by Antonio Negri.
This book, unlike the others, is less about theory and more about the contemporary reality of automation. It thus functions as an interesting test piece for the theoretical works preceding this one. Gray and Suri show that automation is not simply a progressive replacement of human by machine, but rather that each new automation application tends to generate a need for new kinds of labour which cannot (yet) be automated. The empirical work done here is a prime example of understanding what automation really is.
In the spirit of Nickel and Dimed, a necessary and revelatory expose of the invisible human workforce that powers the web—and that foreshadows the true future of work.
Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. They perform…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you…
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
