Post-operaismo’s anthropic, rather than machinic, conception of the general intellect not only inverts Marx’s own formulation but is unable to account for actually-existing applications of AI. In addition, emphasizing a human general intellect leads to an overestimation of the ease with which revolutionary subjectivities, such as Hardt and Negri’s (2001) ‘multitude’, can mobilize against AI-capital. The question of class power today requires a detailed analysis of what AI can really do, whether for or against labour. The next chapter investigates the possibilities for working-class recomposition in this light, which will lead on to a reconsideration, in our Conclusion, of the original operaismo strategy of ‘refusal’ – rather than post-operaismo ‘reappropriation’ – of capitalist technological development.
In sum, while capital remains necessarily underpinned by human cognition and perception, there is a project underway to replace these basic capacities with an infrastructure of AI. The establishment of the means of cognition may be interpreted as the project of, quite literally, infusing the logic of capital into the world, so that capital, instead of the humans situated within it, may think and perceive.
means of cognition
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