A look at generative AI's impact, its structural issue of concentrated power among just a few companies, and utopian questions over an alternative vision for AI
Critiques of artificial intelligence abound. Where's the utopian vision for what it could be?
Boston ReviewEvgeny Morozov
Context & Ripple Effects
This critique moves the generative-AI debate beyond near-term capability claims toward who controls the technology and what social purpose it serves. Earlier coverage warned against building institutions around an assumption of transformative AI, while another account framed its promise and risks as more limited than the surrounding fervor suggested.
It also follows scrutiny of the ethical and legal implications of systems that make previously small-scale creation possible at mass scale, captured in earlier analysis of generative AI's scaling effects. The significance here is the link between that scale and the ownership structure behind it.
First-order effects
The article gives concentrated corporate control a more central place in assessments of generative AI, alongside technical capability, harms, and hype.
It presses advocates and critics to articulate an affirmative alternative for AI rather than treating critique of current systems as a sufficient program.
Second-order effects
Debate over AI deployment is likely to put greater weight on whether access, governance, and benefits are broadly distributed rather than on model performance alone.
Organizations evaluating AI may face stronger pressure to distinguish practical uses from claims that normalize dependence on a small set of providers.
Third-order effects
If this framing persists, AI competition will increasingly be understood as an infrastructure-and-governance question: who owns essential systems, who can shape them, and whether alternatives can remain viable.
The durable divide may be between AI organized as concentrated commercial infrastructure and AI treated as a shared or publicly accountable resource; the corpus does not establish which model will prevail.
The trend: Generative AI discourse is shifting from fascination with capabilities toward contestation over ownership, governance, and the public vision that should guide deployment.
“Early AI focused on replicating the intelligence of a fully committed, emotionally detached office worker—a species of William Whyte's “organization man”.” @bostonreview.bsky.social — www.bostonreview.net/forum/the- ai...
Great Morozov essay on AI and democracy: “the ability of AI to run ideological interference for the prevailing order, whether bureaucracy in its early days or the market today, poses the greatest threat.” #longread www.bostonreview.net/forum/the- ai...
“Technology's emancipatory potential will only be secured through a radical political project.Without one, we are unlikely to gather the resources necessary to ensure that the agendas of the Efficiency Lobby don't overpower those of the Humanity Lobby” E. Morozov www.bostonreview…
Excellent essay by Evgeny Morozov on the history and potential (and historically potential) futures of #AI. Also many well-written and independently interesting responses. — www.bostonreview.net/forum/the- ai...
Fascinating, long essay by Evgeny Morozov exploring how the history of AI gives us a technology designed for instrumental reason, and how some alternative choices could have given—and still could give—us very different and far better forms of human-centred AI: www.bostonreview.ne…
“Incidentally, it's the American pragmatists who got closest to describing the operations of ecological reason. Had the early AI community paid any attention to John Dewey and his work on “embodied intelligence,” many false leads might have been avoided.” https://www.bostonreview…
Interesting piece about the limits of instrumentality/rationality & why efficiency as our guide for AI development is poorly suited for radical thinking about the exploration of potential paths to understanding ourselves & the world. 👀 @ChombaBupe [image]
The forum in our latest issue, AI FUTURES, is now online. Big Tech's tools are remaking the economy, society, and human life as we know it. Against both realists and refuseniks, @evgenymorozov presents a utopian vision for what AI could be: https://www.bostonreview.net/ ...