The winners are those associated with the emerging GPT, whereas the losers are those who cannot benefit from the unfolding GPT. Economists study the impact of GPT in terms of the emergence of winners and losers. They affect entire economies, potentially drastically altering societies through their impact on pre-existing economic and social structures (Trajtenberg 2018). Given their pervasiveness and the complementary waves of innovation they produce, GPT cause economic disruption. They have three main characteristics: (1) they are widely used (2) they are capable of ongoing technical improvement and (3) they enable innovation in different application sectors (Bresnahan, 210: 764). Other examples of GPT are the steam engine, electrification and the Internet. GPT are enabling technologies, meaning that they open up new opportunities, in addition to offering complete, final solutions. The article then considers the commons as an alternative framework for enabling that the benefits of AI can be shared with society at large.Īn important aspect of understanding AI capitalism is to consider AI as a General Purpose Technology (GPT) (Trajtenberg 2018). Using CPE as a framework, this article analyses the tendencies of concentration and monopolisation in AI capitalism. CPE investigates control and ownership of communication systems and its impact on society (Hardy 2014). I explain the contribution of critical political economy (CPE) for analysing AI capitalism. This article starts with considering AI as a GPT and argues why we need to focus on power when thinking about the impact of AI. Beyond this, we also need to think about alternatives that can help mitigate the negative consequences of this power concentration and make sure that society at large can benefit from the new wave of AI innovation. In particular, we want to understand how AI capitalism is organised, what is driving its concentration of power, and its impact. Because AI is a GPT, we need to analyse AI capitalism. AI is a General Purpose Technology (GPT), an enabling technology that impacts on how large sections of the economy and society are organised. There are only a few companies that own exponential computing power, can attract AI talent and have access to data to develop and train advanced machine/deep learning models. The industrial landscape of AI, however, is dominated by Big Tech, a small number of extremely powerful companies. This is not unexpected as the US and China are in an intense competition to become world leaders in AI (Lee 2018). The same study states that the greatest economic gains from AI will be in China (26% boost to GDP by 2030) and North America (14.5% boost) (PwC 2017). For example, PwC ( 2017) predicts AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This is not surprising given assessments about the (future) size of AI in industry. AI now seems ready to have a deep impact on our society and economy.Įspecially, since 2015, a peak in corporate investment, a growing number of mergers and acquisitions and more intensive competitive hiring of AI talent can be noticed (Dyer-Witheford et al. The confluence of factors-the availability of powerful computing capacity, new techniques in machine/deep learning leading to more sophisticated algorithms and the growing availability of data with which to train these algorithms-enable AI to be deployed far more extensively (Elliott 2019 Hall and Pesenti 20). While AI is around for more than 60 years and periods of hope and optimism have been alternated with so-called AI Winters, it seems crucial parts of the puzzle finally have started to fall into place. 2020), while AI is also the subject of an arms race between the US, China and Russia to have their military forces equipped with automated weapons (Asaro 2019). Policymakers are looking at the opportunities of AI for tackling global challenges, such as climate change (Dobbe and Whittaker 2019) or pandemics (Tzachor et al. In business circles, AI is seen as a catalyst for growth, which will manifestly transform the economy (Agrawal et al. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most hyped innovations of our times. It is argued that much of our productivity and prosperity will be derived from the systems and machines we are creating (Brynjolfsson et al. We are at the crossroads of technological developments which are changing our economy and society.