AI-based data processing firms hold asymmetrical power over the division of learning

Evidence

Information is digital, but its volume exceeds our ability to discern its meaning. As the solution to this problem, information scholar Martin Hilbert counsels, “The only option we have left to make sense of all the data is to fight fire with fire,” using “artificially intelligent computers” to “sift through the vast amounts of information.… Facebook, Amazon, and Google have promised to… create value out of vast amounts of data through intelligent computational analysis.” The rise of surveillance capitalism necessarily turns Hilbert’s advice into a dangerous proposition. Although he does not mean to, Hilbert merely confirms the privileged position of the surveillance capitalists and the asymmetrical power that enables them to bend the division of learning to their interests. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 589

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘division of learning’ asymmetry echoes Marx’s division of labor critique, tying surveillance capitalism to classic political economy. — connects to: Monopoly over knowledge means controlling the paradigm, not just data — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 743

Broader Connections

• Monopoly over knowledge means controlling the paradigm, not just data #expands (0.78) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 743