Abstract

This paper critically evaluates the impact of Artificial Intelligence-based automation on the nature of work. Contrary to the conventional belief that automation replaces human-labour, or that it makes the human-labour easier, this paper argues that neither of these are true. The paper proposes an understanding where the work is neither replaced nor made easy, it only changes its form. In the process of changing its form, the new work-regime radically transforms the worker’s relations with the production process and the machine, in effect, encompassing all aspects of a worker’s time and reality.

Keywords: Machine, Algorithms, Desiring-machine, General Intellect, Automaton, Cognitariat, Info-sphere.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. What is automation? Or, what is automated?

3. What is different about A.I. automation?

4. Changing forms of work

5. The New Society