Labour, Machines and Energy in Capital’s Ecology
The Case of Artificial Intelligence

This draft chapter for a forthcoming book on capital, nature and sustainability analyzes artificial intelligence (AI) as an example of the ever-evolving contradiction between what Karl Marx called "living" and "dead" labour. The chapter proposes that all aspects of the current AI crisis can be illuminated by reference to this contradiction, including ongoing grabs of energy, water, minerals and unpaid work; false propaganda claims that artificial general intelligence might someday be achieved through "scaling;" and efforts to accelerate the "kill chain" evident in current US and Israeli assaults on Gaza and Iran.

The chapter's analysis begins by unpacking three key features of living labour (animate movement, rhythms and rules), using materials from contemporary research in biology, archaeology, robotics, music, philosophy, history, anthropology, psychology, linguistics and other fields. It then turns to thermodynamics and the history of entropy landscapes in order to apply the same kind of update to the 19th-century concept of dead labour. Putting the contradiction between the two together, the chapter draws the lesson that the category of “life” needs to be given more careful political attention in efforts to address ecological and economic crisis.

See also 

https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/world-ecology-living-labour
https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/labour-energy-and-colonial-ge...
https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/interpretation-machines
https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/labour-justice-and-mechanizat...
https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/ecology-trust-mechanization
https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/postcapitalism-and-perpetual-...