Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Resistance
A new wave of enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has swept through recent years, bringing with it promises of liberating workers from mundane tasks and offering technological fixes for pressing global issues, such as environmental degradation. AI-based technologies are often touted as capable of transforming the world in unprecedented ways. Yet, despite this optimism, AI tools and automation have yet to be fully integrated into capitalist production in ways that significantly boost labour productivity. Empirical evidence shows no marked growth in productivity. Instead, AI has primarily been deployed to monitor workers and reduce costs by replacing segments of intellectual labour. Rather than liberating or destroying us, AI seems to function as an accelerator of pre-existing tendencies in the capitalist mode of production, including the expropriation of natural resources, intensified energy consumption, and the privatisation and commodification of the intellectual and digital commons. In this sense, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence exacerbates existing and emerging crises. Critically understanding this dynamic and finding ways to address it should take priority in this context.
Despite these realities, investment in AI continues to rise, as “new technologies” captivate the imaginations of ruling elites across the globe. Framing our era and its challenges through the narrow lens of the Fourth Industrial Revolution reflects a broader systemic impasse—one that cuts across political systems, dominant ideologies, geopolitical rivalries, and the futile attempts to address climate change while remaining within the constraints of capitalism. The struggle to situate technology within its broader socio-historical context has thus gained prominence in contemporary political discourse.
In this context, the growing opposition of workers to AI, particularly in the digital platform and creative sectors, takes on critical significance. Unionisation efforts within major technology companies, alongside the struggles of platform and precarious workers, are beginning to challenge the dominant narratives of “innovation” and “entrepreneurship.” These movements highlight the exploitative conditions fostered by AI and digital platforms, particularly through the use of algorithmic management. Examining AI, platforms, and other technological adoptions within the framework of labour conflicts allows us to understand their dual role: both as tools of capitalist domination and as potential means for contesting and reshaping existing power dynamics in ways that align with workers’ interests.
Moreover, these ongoing struggles, combined with intra-capitalist rivalries, have pushed state and supranational organisations to acknowledge the risks posed by AI capital. Recent regulatory efforts at the EU level, such as the AI Act and the Platform Work Directive, aim to set a global standard for AI governance. However, these regulations largely function as bureaucratic nuisances for AI capital rather than as effective barriers to its expansion or its destructive appropriation of natural and digital resources. Building on existing struggles and radical critiques of technology, we must explore alternative strategies to regulate AI capital and place meaningful limits on its expansion.
Consequently, we want to invite contributions on the following topics, though our list is indicative and not exhaustive:
Labour and social relations in the realm of algorithmic management: The impact of algorithmic management on labour relations, the redefinition of roles, and the modification of workplace hierarchy. This encompasses the influence of AI on the technical division of labour as well as wider societal disparities.
Critical approaches related to history and philosophy of technology in order to situate its development within capitalist social formations and examine the way social interests and conflicts become embedded into technological artefacts.
Artificial intelligence and capitalist ideology: Exploring how AI is embedded within and reinforces capitalist ideology, shaping how society perceives technological progress, labour, and value, while obscuring underlying power dynamics and inequalities.
AI policies and regulations: Examining the political and regulatory structures that oversee the development and utilisation of AI (such as the EU AI Act), focusing on implications for labour as well as the potential for alternative strategies to limit the power of AI capital.
Global Inequalities and technology: Analysing the manner in which AI perpetuates the economic subjugation of peripheral nations to those at the forefront of AI discovery and development.
Ethical issues of AI: Tackling the ethical concerns posed by AI, including surveillance, data privacy, and algorithmic biases, in the context of a comprehensive critique of capitalism.
Resistance to AI: Examining how labourers and social movements may oppose and reclaim AI technologies to contest capitalist exploitation and establish alternative social frameworks.
AI’s impact on the field of culture and politics. Examining how AI-generated content (from automated journalism to AI “art” and deepfake videos) feeds into the existing fragmentation and polarisation of the public sphere.
We welcome submissions for panels and individual papers. Abstracts should be under 300 words and be sent to the Historical Materialism Athens 2025 call for papers.
We stress that the conference will be in person. Panel chairs should be clearly indicated where appropriate.
