ABSTRACT
New fronts of automation raise old fears about machinery displacing labour. With attention to present metamorphoses in the social relation of capital, this chapter presents six theses to suggest why recent technologies of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are unlikely to resolve the question of whether automation eliminates labour or moves it to other sectors of economic activity. Respectively, these theses address issues of history, futures, data, extraction, environment, and failures. Together, they argue that automation must always reckon with a constitutive outside – comprising of both labour and environment – upon which it depends for its supposed autonomy. Overall, the chapter investigates the implications of automation for the theorization of subjectivity and our comprehension of the world-making capacities of data politics.
