Artificial imaginaries: Generative AIs as an advanced form of capitalism

In this essay, we characterize three paradoxical imaginaries that structure the development of generative artificial intelligence (genAI). At the institutional level, these technologies develop in a context that celebrates openness and liberality. Yet, both in the US and in Europe, they serve to centralize power and resources. At the organizational level, while the imaginary is that these technologies make work more interesting, we show that they rather produce anxiety and a new class of precarious workers. At the epistemic level, generative artificial intelligence promises access to unlimited knowledge. This knowledge may appear robust, as these technologies become performative. However, the knowledge they produce is doubtful. Overall, these technologies centralize power and exclude, they standardize knowledge, and they produce, reproduce, amplify and extend various structures of domination.