Matteo Pasquinelli – The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence

matteo-pasquinelli

Verso, ISBN 978-1788730068, English, 272 pages, 2023, UK

Even though AI has been the most discussed technology for some time, its deeper cultural understanding still remains obscure, lost between boastful technical specifications and the fear of its impact on the labour market in the rush to integrate it into every work environment – ‘intelligence’ is probably the most ambiguous part of it. Pasquinelli’s book is therefore a pleasant antidote to AI’s obnubilation effect, distracting from its mind-boggling complexity and based on a solid premise: ‘Ai is constituted[…] by the intelligence of labour and social relations.’ The two main chapters are devoted to the mechanical intelligences (‘automation of mental labour’) of the industrial age and the electronic intelligences (‘automation of visual labour’) of the information age. This approach coherently reveals an obvious pattern in the construction of ‘intelligent machines’: the invisible ‘surrogate humanity’ behind their results. The centrality of ‘social intelligence’ and the debunking of the myth of the ‘master algorithm’ are thus underpinned by a historical structure. It is a decidedly political book, but far more fascinating than a classic neo-materialist work, as it takes a clear position that supersedes technological thinking and propaganda and puts the methods of knowledge production and their general consequences back centre stage.