{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","title":"人工智能和资本主义的未来","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780745338613","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","id":"a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","uuid":"a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","title":"人工智能和资本主义的未来","normalized_title":"人工智能和资本主义的未来","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780745338613","isbns":["9780745338613","9780745338606","9781786803955","9781786803979","9781786803962"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":225,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/%E4%BA%BA%E5%B7%A5%E6%99%BA%E8%83%BD%E5%92%8C%E8%B5%84%E6%9C%AC%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89%E7%9A%84%E6%9C%AA%E6%9D%A5","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a2eab101-adfc-4a0d-8142-63a4d11cee02/search"},"page":{"printed_page":38,"pdf_page":46,"physical_index":46,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"847b9b77301d881b859590fb90db34cc78746e42423b8d1dbc529d732f74a76a"},"chapter":"Digital Barricades: Interventions in Digital Culture and Politics","content":"Microsoft and Apple\n\nAlthough of an older generation of IT companies than Google, Facebook and Amazon, Microsoft draws not only on decades of software development experience, but also on the records of interaction with millions of computer users for projects such as Cortana (the digital assistant bundled with its software), and more and less successful chatbot ventures, ranging from the catastrophic Tay (which machine-learned from online conversations to be a racist, sexist Nazi that had to be terminated with extreme prejudice) to the more innocuous teenager-imitating Zo. Finally, Microsoft’s long-time competitor, Apple, which initially seemed the least AI-avid of the major platform capitalists, has also entered the arena in 2016–17, with the ongoing development of its digital personal assistant Siri and the creation of FaceID, a facial recognition security system for iPhone users. In 2018, it dramatically poached Google’s AI chief (Patrizio 2018).2\n\nBeyond the Tech Giants\n\nAround the top-rank tech corporations are clustered many smaller start-up companies that are attempting to carve out niches in specialized branches of the AI industry, ranging from biotechnology, to farming, education, merchandising and surveillance (Zilis and Cham 2016; Patrizio 2018). This scene is ever changing. It is likely that, in a pattern familiar from previous cycles of IT development, many of these companies will flare up and burn out, with the successes likely to be acquired by AI industry giants: ‘115 of 120 AI companies that exited the market in 2017 did so by acquisition’ (Patrizio 2018). Companies producing specialized hardware for AI systems also continue to appear in the shadows of dominant hardware firms like Nvidia and Intel. Venture capitalists invested \\$1.5 billion in hardware start-ups in 2017, twice as much as two years previously; new companies such as Cerebras, Graphcore and Cambricon have each attracted over \\$100 million in speculative funding. Such start-ups ‘are racing toward one of two goals: Find a profitable niche or get acquired. Fast’ (C. Metz 2018).\n\nSTATE ACTORS: AI SUPERPOWERS\n\nAnother crucial actor in AI development is the state. Marx never completed a systematic study of the capitalist state, and attempts by his followers to do so have stirred some of the most complex debates in Marxist theory.<sup>3</sup> However, one function Marx clearly did ascribe to the state in capitalism was the creation of certain general conditions of production (Marx 1990: 506; 1993: 530) such as infrastructures, which could then be transferred to private capital once they became profitable ventures. Such privatized industries in turn provide capitalist states with technological powers exercised in the name of national security against rivals: this is the dynamic of military-industrial complexes. This path of state-capital interactions is classically demonstrated by the development of digital technologies in the US. Computers and networks were incubated in the military-corporate-academic wing of the Pentagon before passing into general commercial use (Edwards 1996; Mazzucato 2013). The most celebrated, but by no means singular, case is the funding of the internet’s creation by the US Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). Contrary to the libertarian self-presentation of digital capital, the creation of US high-tech industries depended on state-sponsored research, subsidization and contracts for the creation of the technologies which played a major role in America’s Cold War victory over its state-socialist opponents.\n\n38\n\ninhuman power","previous_page":37,"next_page":39}