AI policy for whom?: reclaiming governance from capitalist capture
2025 (English)In: Proceedings of the eighth AAAI/ACM conference on AI, ethics, and society (AIES-25): main track I, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) , 2025, p. 838-849Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Contemporary AI policy is dominated by hegemonic ne-oliberal ideology, embedding assumptions of individualism,rationality, and market fundamentalism into its regulatoryframeworks. This is evident in major policy efforts (e.g., theEU AI Act or the OECD principles) which prioritize eco-nomic growth and innovation over justice, equity, and col-lective welfare, and in the current policy landscape that fa-vors market incentives and private sector leadership whilesidelining democratic control and structural critique. This pa-per questions these prevailing paradigms and exposes howthey reflect and reinforce capitalist power structures throughcorporate lobbying, the pursuit of specific kinds of AI mod-els motivated primarily by usefulness to capital, and the ex-ternalization of social and environmental costs. We argue thateffective AI governance must confront, rather than accommo-date, capitalist interests. Drawing on legal and political the-ory, we propose an explicitly anti-capitalist approach to AIpolicy, that centers on social well-being, redistributive justice,and democratic control over technological infrastructures. Indoing so, we outline essential counter-balancing policy ap-proaches to reclaim AI governance from capitalistic captureand advance just and sustainable technology futures.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) , 2025. p. 838-849
Series
Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, ISSN 3065-8365 ; 2025:8(1)
Keywords [en]
AI Policy, AI Governance, Critical AI Studies, Neoliberalism, Anti-capitalism
National Category
Computer Sciences Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-245747DOI: 10.1609/aies.v8i1.36594Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105040218256ISBN: 978-1-57735-902-9 (print)ISBN: 157735902X (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-245747DiVA, id: diva2:2007794
Conference
AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, Madrid, Spain, October 20-22, 2025
Funder
Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS)2025-10-212025-10-212026-06-18Bibliographically approved