The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence
By Matteo Pasquinelli. Verso Books, October 2023. Paperback, 272 pages. ISBN: 9781788730068.
Core Argument
Pasquinelli challenges the dominant narrative that AI seeks to replicate biological intelligence or solve intelligence through understanding the mind's neural networks. Instead, he contends that AI's foundational logic derives from labour organization and social relations -- specifically tracing its development from Babbage's industrial calculating engines through modern surveillance algorithms.
Key Thesis
"The inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations." Algorithms are mechanisms for automating labour rather than embodying genuine intelligence.
Main Arguments
- Labour-Centered History: AI development is rooted in workplace automation and industrial organization rather than cognitive science
- Automation Disguised as Intelligence: What appears as sophisticated machine intelligence is actually blind automation of labour processes
- Social Control Function: AI algorithms perpetuate the extraction of workers' knowledge, crystallized into capital-owned machines
- Demystification Project: The book aims to provide new literacy for understanding AI as a tool of labour management and surveillance
Critical Reception
Reviewers highlight Pasquinelli's synthesis of Marxist political economy with AI history, praising his "omnivorous intellect" and ambitious conceptual framework for understanding automation's political dimensions.