Critical Theory – No Replacement for Human Creativity

Since ChatGPT has been writing speeches for politicians and presentations for students, AI – artificial intelligence – has been on everyone’s lips. And as with any technical innovation, the most fantastic narratives are circulating this time too. People talk about “creative computers” on radio and television, and the right-wing high-tech elites in Silicon Valley announce the arrival of a “technological singularity” that they have long propagated – that is, the evolutionary overcoming of humans by machines.

Against this background, Matteo Pasquinelli’s book »The Eye of the Master. “A Social History of Artificial Intelligence” is a beneficial attempt to refute some of the myths surrounding AI. The core thesis of the media philosopher from Italy is quickly outlined: It states that not just any technological progress, but – as political scientist Sandra Mezzadra, a friend of Pasquinelli’s, summed it up – “work is the root of the historical development of AI.” In other words: “The Eye of the Master” is a well-informed critique of technology fetishism from a scientific-historical point of view.

After a very premise-rich introduction that revolves around current technology debates and therefore becomes more of a hurdle than an introduction for average readers, Pasquinelli develops his thesis in the main part in a way that is easy to understand. The Italian media philosopher first traces the conceptual history of the “algorithm”. The term, which is derived from the name of the Arab mathematician al-Chwarizmi, who was born at the end of the 8th century, describes the sequence of clearly defined individual steps to solve a problem, whereby the individual steps are arranged hierarchically and are based on rigid rules.

According to Pasquinelli, the algorithmic process does not have its origins in the abstract thinking of mathematicians, but in the processes of division and organization of labor. In his opinion, the connection can already be demonstrated for the early history of mathematical methods, which developed not least with the administrative practices of Mesopotamian rule, and becomes particularly clear in early capitalist society. Using the “Analytical Engine” of the mathematician Charles Babbage, born in 1791 (who is considered one of the inventors of the calculating machine and thus also the computer), Pasquinelli outlines how the division of labor production processes in manufacturing companies shaped machine thinking. The breakdown of early industrial work into small, easily controllable individual steps was the model for Babbage’s designs, which in turn were intended to make work processes even more controllable and efficient. Or in the words of Pasquinelli: “The secret of Babbage’s calculating machine lay not in the imitation of God’s foreknowledge, as Babbage himself claimed, but rather in the everyday business of workshops and factories, which consisted of continuous failures and conflicts with the workers, including of his own team’s disobedience.”

With this change of perspective, Pasquinelli builds on a tradition of critical Italian social philosophy, namely “operaism,” which from the 1960s onwards sought a radical workers’ perspective and in this sense dealt critically with the large Fordist factory and the associated work organization. For the operaists, technology is not a neutral development, but rather an instrument for controlling and determining the workers. The assembly line is therefore not simply an efficient arrangement of production steps, but rather enables the factory owner to centrally determine the pace of work and prevent employees from organizing their work independently. In other words: Operaism always sees machines as power technology.

Pasquinelli now argues in a very similar way. In his view, computers and artificial intelligence do not replace human work and creativity, but rather dissect and copy them in order to further intensify capital’s control over work processes. That is also the reason why the title of the book already speaks of a “social history” – and not of a history of technology. For Pasquinelli, the emergence of artificial intelligence is entirely determined by the power relations of the society in which we live.

In this respect, “The Eye of the Master” is a great and well-researched manifesto against those elitist fantasies that try to attribute supernatural powers to AI. For Pasquinelli, all the talk about creative machines is just another attempt by bourgeois modernity to disguise its social conditions. The Italian very deservedly won the German Prize for critical theory, which is important in the English-speaking world, for this work. It is remarkable that the small Unrast publishing house from Münster was able to publish this important book in its series on artificial intelligence. However, it would be desirable if the theory books were proofread a little more carefully. Especially in a complex philosophical text like “The Eye of the Master,” even small errors in editing make it difficult to understand entire passages.

Matteo Pasquinelli: The Eye of the Master. A social history of artificial intelligence. A.d. English v. Karina Hermes. Unrast-Verlag, 288 pages, br., 22 €.