The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence - from Fiction to Socio-Technological Reality?
Final Report Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have gained renewed political and economic relevance in recent years, which is increasingly reflected in the political agenda of many industrialized nations. The "AI Act" is the first attempt at comprehensive European AI regulation, and the German government's national AI strategy identified AI technologies as a key area of political action back in 2018. The targeted German-European promotion of AI technologies via industrial and innovation policy measures ("active" industrial policy) should set in motion a technological catch-up process in a field that has been dominated by large non-European technology companies ("big tech") to date. The success of this "catching up" process is seen as relevant for securing both the German economic model and German-European competitiveness. Against this background, the research project "The political economy of artificial intelligence - from fiction to socio-technical reality" firstly investigated the extent to which a transformation of German-European technology and industrial policy from regulatory to interventionist statehood is currently emerging via the political field of action "AI". On the basis of an empirical investigation of German AI technology policy in the dimensions of state AI funding programs and public venture capital, political interest mediation and AI regulation, it was possible to determine here, contrary to the initially expected "interventionist" reorientation of state AI technology policy, that continuities in the political institutions of the German funding regime continue to predominate, which tends to contradict a concerted development of AI capacities at the national level in the sense of an economic "catching up". Secondly, the project analyzed the strategic self-positioning of key players in the "AI" field of action in the German innovation system, particularly with regard to their relationship to Big Tech and state AI technology policy. Here, there was an increase in AI-mediated innovation activities as well as self-organization and network formation predominantly under private sector initiative, in which AI innovation and production are realized within the limits of actor-specific self-interests, capacities and business models and remain relegated to strategic cooperation with Big Tech. These results illustrate the need for comprehensive state investment in digital AI infrastructures and AI-specific regulation in Germany and Europe, as this is the only way to achieve future scope for action in the field of tension between a public welfare-oriented and competitive technology design. Overall, the results of the project indicate that the orientation of the current socio-technical reality of the political economy of AI in Germany does not break the trend of a global monopolization of AI capacities and the exacerbation of asymmetries in AI value chains. Due to the highly dynamic nature of the field under investigation, it is not clear at the end of the project what impact recent AI regulation and infrastructure policy measures will have in the future.
Publications
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Counter-hegemonic neoliberalism: making sense of EU platform regulation. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 2(1)
Staab, P., Sieron, S. & Piétron, D.
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Technological sovereignty in Germany: techno-industrial policy as a form of economic statecraft?. Global Political Economy, 4(1), 51-70.
Staab, Philipp; Pirogan, Marc & Piétron, Dominik
