Artificial Intelligence and Social Change – a Challenge for Democratic Relations of Power and Domination

Artificial intelligence is a key technology of the 21st century that has and will continue to have a far-reaching impact on all areas of society and people's everyday lives. Technological revolutions always have had the potential to substantially transform power relations and power structures in a society and to lead to unrest and social upheaval.

When the economic and social effects of AI are considered, the focus is usually on the transformation of the economic and working world or on ethical and normative aspects. However, the power issues associated with the development and application of AI usually remain strangely underexposed and undertheorised.

The presentation looks at the influence of AI on social power structures and asks how power relations in economy, politics and society are being transformed by the use of artificial intelligence and what consequences this has for economy, society and democracy.

It is shown that AI does not have an emancipating, equalising, levelling and democratising effect per se. Rather, AI and the digital capitalism lead firstly to an automated alienation, secondly to a promotion of financialisation, which enormously accelerates and potentiates the crisis-prone nature of capitalism, and thirdly to a potentiation, centralisation, monopolisation and stabilisation of the infrastructural, informational and market-dominating power of already powerful players. This is accompanied by an intensification of inequalities and an increase of tensions and conflicts. In this respect, AI and the digital capitalism have the power and potential to undermine democracy as a form of government and as a way of life.