03005cam a2200337 i 4500 10414232 CaAEU 20250312151721.0 230511t20232023enka b 001 0 eng 2023020753 GBC3F4740 bnb 021176224 Uk 9781788730068 (paperback) on1353949626 DLC eng rda DLC OCLCF UKMGB YDX PZX OCLCO SFB VRA PMC UIU pcc HC79.A9 P37 2023 Pasquinelli, Matteo, author. 24909 The eye of the master : a social history of artificial intelligence / Matteo Pasquinelli. London ; New York : Verso, 2023. ©2023 viii, 264 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm Includes bibliographical references and index. Introduction: AI as Division of Labour — The Material Tools of Algorithmic Thinking — Part I: The Industrial Age — Babbage and the Mechanisation of Mental Labour — The Machinery Question — The Origins of Marx's General Intellect — The Abstraction of Labour — Part II: The Information Age — The Self-Organisation of the Cybernetic Mind — The Automation of Pattern Recognition — Hayek and the Epistemology of Connectionism — The Invention of the Perceptron — Conclusion: The Automation of General Intelligence A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest “to solve intelligence,” a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage’s “calculating engines” of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance. The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or “sentient”, as someone thought of Google’s LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation. The Eye of the Master urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the “mystery” of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se. Provided by publisher. TECHNOLOGY Automation Social aspects History. Machinery in the workplace Social aspects History. Artificial Intelligence Social aspects History. Employees Effect of technological innovations on History. lcc 0 0 lcc 0 0 TBS TBS 2025-03-12 0 HC79.A9 PAS B07507 2025-03-12 1 2025-03-12 1 4538 4538