{"id":6501,"date":"2023-09-10T12:32:36","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T10:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kim.hfg-karlsruhe.de\/?p=6501"},"modified":"2023-11-09T00:51:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T23:51:35","slug":"theories-of-automation-hm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kim.hfg-karlsruhe.de\/theories-of-automation-hm\/","title":{"rendered":"Theories of Automation Before and After Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panel and book launch of The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence <\/em>by Matteo Pasquinelli (Verso, 2023) <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

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Historical Materialism Conference
\nBirkbeck Malet Street campus, London
\n10 November 2023, 14:15-16:00
\n\u2192 <\/span><\/i>\u00a0Programme<\/a><\/strong>
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The panel investigates the spectrum of automation theories and technological transformation with a focus on AI as the last stage of the automation of manual, mental, and care labour. <\/span>Authors like Benanav (2020) relativize the impact of AI on employment and emphasise deindustrialization and stagnation tendencies, while Pasquinelli (2023) centres the valorisation process of platform capitalism and AI monopolies around a new discipline and metrics of labour. As <\/span>Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora (2019) have pointed out, the project of AI and automation in generalI remains grounded on the \u2018surrogate humanity\u2019 and invisible labour of enslaved, workers, and women that have made possible the universalistic ideal of the free and autonomous (white) subject.<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel invites to explore and question a deep historical perspective spanning the theories of automation of the industrial age (Adam Smith, Babbage, Marx, William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin), the Time and Motion Studies from United States and Soviet Union\u2019s Taylorism (Gilbreths, Gastev, Biomechanics movement), the labour process theory debate (Braverman, Noble), the positions of Autonomist Marxism (Tronti, Negri, Mezzadra), and more recently communisation theory (Endnotes). The panel engages also with the historical epistemology of science and technology (Hessen, Grossmann, Kula, Damerow, Renn, Rheinberger, Schaffer, Daston, Galison, Omodeo, Schmidgen) and feminist and decolonial epistemologies (Rose, Harding, Fox Keller, Haraway, Federici).<\/span><\/p>\n

Recent machine learning models, based on statistical techniques of correlation deploying billions of parameters, have marked the passage to a new paradigm that could be defined as the \u2018automation of automation.\u2019 The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has shown how the project of abstracting language via statistical analysis ultimately operationalised a key feature of the human qua \u2018political animal\u2019. In this regard, LLMs extend the automation of division of labour from task management to the sphere of social mediation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Themes<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n