Call for papers: Artificial intelligence through the lenses of Marxism and critical thinking

Organizers of the dossier:

James Steinhoff - University College Dublin 

Jonas Valente - Oxford Internet Institute

Rodrigo Moreno Marques - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

 

Deadline to submissions: 16 February, 2024

 

Artificial intelligence is a subject that has been increasingly popular in academia, in public debates, among authorities, and in mass media. Therefore, different knowledge fields have been dealing with it, pushing the debate out of the limits of exact sciences and computer science.

In the fields of the humanities and social sciences, artificial intelligence has been analyzed through different approaches, such as power relations (Dyer-Whiteford et al., 2019), the limits of autonomy and its relation to humankind (Davies, 2008), the impacts on the relations of production (Benanav, 2020), the adverse effects such as in discriminatory practices (Benjamin, 2023), and the automation of human activities in areas such as law (Pasquale, 2019) and education (Zhai et al. 2021).

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that a significant part of these approaches, far from the critique of political economy, falls under the traps of fetishism (Marx, 2013, 2014, 2017) and does not reveal the essential aspects hidden in the manifestations of the phenomenon. But there are exceptions, such as the works of Dyer-Whiteford et al. (2019), Lindgreen (2023), Steinhoff (2021), Gong (2021), Yi (2020), Cole et al. (2022) and Verdegem (2021), among others. However, these kinds of effort need to be further expanded.

It is urgent to adopt Marxist thinking and the arms of critique to unveil and analyze the social form that artificial intelligence assumes as an instrument of capital, as well as an instrument of alienation and estrangement of human labor, of labor instruments, of fruits from labor, and, ultimately, of human essence (Marx, 2004).

In this vein, Eptic Journal (ISSN 1518-2487) invites authors to submit articles to the dossier entitled Artificial intelligence through the lenses of Marxism and critical thinking. Articles can be submitted until 16 February 2024. Texts must follow the journal's standard format.

We will receive submissions that deal with the following subjects:

- Labor and social relations in the realm of artificial intelligence.

- How artificial intelligence affects working relations and capitalist exploitation in different sectors of the economy.

- Aspects of formal subsumption and real subsumption of labor under capital in the context of artificial intelligence.

- Impacts of artificial intelligence on the technical division of labor and on the social division of labor.

- How economic agents design and/or adopt artificial intelligence techniques.

- Policies concerning the development and use of artificial intelligence.

- The struggles in the sphere of regulation of artificial intelligence.

- How the process of production and distribution of value and wealth are affected by the adoption of artificial intelligence.

- Dependence and economic subordination of periphery countries in relation to countries that lead the design and use of artificial intelligence.

- Artificial intelligence as a capitalist instrument of economic, symbolic, and political power.

- Impacts of artificial intelligence in communication and culture from Marxist and critical perspectives.

- Ethics challenges in the field of artificial intelligence from a critical perspective.

- Resistances and possibilities of use of artificial intelligence as an instrument to face the capital order and its sociability.

The focus of the dossier will be theoretical and empirical analyses based on the critique of political economy, as well as Marxist and critical thinking.

Deadline to submissions: 16 February, 2024

Instructions to submissions are available at: revistaeptic.net.br

References

Benanav, A. (2020). Automation and the Future of Work. Verso Books.

Benjamin, R. (2023). Race after technology. In Social Theory Re-Wired (pp. 405-415). Routledge.

Cole, M., Cant, C., Ustek Spilda, F., & Graham, M. (2022). Politics by automatic means? A critique of artificial intelligence ethics at work. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, 869114.

Davies, T. (2008). Humanism. Routledge.

Dyer-Witheford, N., Kjøsen, A. M., & Steinhoff, J. (2019). Inhuman power. Artificial intelligence and the future of capitalism.

Gong, W. (2021). Artificial Intelligence from the Perspective of Marxist Philosophy. International Journal of Social Science and Education Research, 4(9), 151-156.

Lindgreen, S. (ed) (2023). Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence. Elgar.

Marx, K. (2004). Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos. Boitempo.

Marx. K. (2013). O capital. Livro I. Boitempo.

Marx. K. (2014). O capital. Livro II. Boitempo.

Marx. K. (2017). O capital. Livro III. Boitempo.

Pasquale, F. (2019). A rule of persons, not machines: the limits of legal automation. Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 87, 1.

Steinhoff, J. (2021). Automation and Autonomy. Springer International Publishing.

Verdegem, P. (2021). AI for Everyone?: Critical Perspectives (p. 310). University of Westminster Press.

Yi, C. (2020). A Brief Analysis of the Alienation of Artificial Intelligence-Taking Marx's Theory of labor Alienation as an Analytical Tool. Frontiers in Economics and Management, 1(11), 182-188.

Zhai, X., Chu, X., Chai, C. S., Jong, M. S. Y., Istenic, A., Spector, M., ... & Li, Y. (2021). A Review of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education from 2010 to 2020. Complexity, 2021, 1-18.