Table Of ContentArtificial Intelligence in the
Capitalist University
Using Marxist critique, this book explores manifestations of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education and demonstrates how it contrib-
utes to the functioning and existence of the capitalist university.
Challenging the idea that AI is a break from previous capitalist tech-
nologies, the book offers nuanced examination of the impacts of AI
on the control and regulation of academic work and labour, on digital
learning and remote teaching, and on the value of learning and knowl-
edge. Applying a Marxist perspective, Preston argues that commodity
fetishism, surveillance, and increasing productivity ushered in by the
growth of AI, further alienates and exploits academic labour and com-
modifies learning and research. The text puts forward a solid theoretical
framework and methodology for thinking about AI to inform critical
and revolutionary pedagogies.
Offering an impactful and timely analysis, this book provides a criti-
cal engagement and application of key Marxist concepts in the study of
AI’s role in Higher Education. It will be of interest to those working or
researching in Higher Education.
John Preston is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology,
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Essex, UK.
Routledge Studies in Education, Neoliberalism, and
Marxism
Series editor Dave Hill, Anglia Ruskin University,
Chelmsford and Cambridge, England
19 Crisis, Austerity, and New Frameworks for Teaching and Learning
A Pedagogy of Hope for Contemporary Greek Education
By Maria Chalari
20 The Impacts of Neoliberalism on US Community Colleges
Reclaiming Faculty Voice in Academic Governance
By Greg Sethares
21 The Educational Philosophy of Luis Emilio Recabarren: Pioneering
Working Class Education in Latin America
By María Alicia Rueda
22 Critical Reflections on the Language of Neoliberalism in Education
Dangerous Words and Discourses of Possibility
Edited by Spyros Themelis
23 The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education:
Critical Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and
Justice
Edited by Mitja Sardoč
24 The Emergence of Postfeminist Identities in Higher Education
Neoliberal Dynamics and the Performance of Gendered
Subjectivities
Eleftheria Atta
25 Social Haunting, Education, and the Working Class
A Critical Marxist Ethnography in a Former Mining Community
Kat Simpson
26 Artificial Intelligence in the Capitalist University
Academic Labour, Commodification, and Value
John Preston
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Education-Neoliberalism-and-
Marxism/book-series/RSEN
Artificial Intelligence in the
Capitalist University
Academic Labour,
Commodification, and Value
John Preston
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 John Preston
The right of John Preston to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Preston, John, 1967- author.
Title: Artificial intelligence in the capitalist university : academic
labour, commodification, and value / John Preston.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge
studies in education, neoliberalism, and marxism | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022507 (print) | LCCN 2021022508
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367533779 (hardback) | ISBN
9781032123622 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003081654 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Artificial intelligence–Educational applications. |
Artificial intelligence–Economic aspects. | Education, Higher–
Effect of technological innovations on | Education, Higher–
Economic aspects. | Capitalism and education. | Marxist
criticism.
Classification: LCC LB1028.43 .P74 2022 (print) | LCC
LB1028.43 (ebook) | DDC 378.1/7344678–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022507
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022508
ISBN: 978-0-367-53377-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12362-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08165-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003081654
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Capitalist Universities, AI, and Value 14
3 AI and the Subsumption of Academic Labour 44
4 The Pixarfication of Higher Education 80
5 Disaster Capitalism and Time in the Virtual University 104
6 AI, Existential Threat, and the Capitalist University 125
7 AI and the End of the Capitalist University 144
Index 169
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the support of the Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) who funded this work (Grant num-
ber: EP/R021031/1). The ‘Chatty Factories’ project from which this
work arose enabled me to create the conceptual framework for the book
in terms of its emphasis on ‘value critique’ (Chapter 2), to consider how
concepts from digital manufacturing were applied in the service sector
and Higher Education (HE) (Chapter 3), to develop ideas of how sentient
commodities arise (Pixarfication, Chapter 4), to analyse how AI is chang-
ing production times (Chapter 5), and new ways of theorising the rela-
tionship between humans, machines, and capitalism (Chapters 6 and 7).
Although the emphasis of the funding was on digital manufacturing,
this book considers the implications of digital manufacturing and AI for
a particular service sector: HE, but it produces concepts that are useful
for thinking about all sorts of capitalist work, commodification, time,
and existential threat. I would like to thank all members of the Chatty
Factories project. It was a fantastic project to work on with excellent col-
leagues. The ideas and concepts used in this book, as well as errors, are
my own. Rhiannon Firth worked with me at the University of Essex on
‘Chatty Factories’ and we have other forthcoming publications from the
project which enabled us to explore ideas of value, work, and utopias. It
was great, as always, to work with Rhiannon.
In terms of the intellectual journey of this project, I would like to
thank, in particular, various Marxist colleagues who have influenced
my thinking over the years until it has arrived at this point, particu-
larly Dave Hill for having confidence in this book, Mike Cole, Alpesh
Maisuria, Glenn Rikowski, Tony Green, Peter McLaren, and James
Avis. I would also like to thank fellow colleagues and friends including
Kalwant Bhopal, Charlotte Chadderton, and Andrew Ravenscroft for
their intellectual support. In the last ten years I have worked at four
universities for various reasons from precarity to necessity (Institute of
Education, University of East London, Bath Spa University, and now
Acknowledgements vii
the University of Essex). Thanks to my colleagues at the Department of
Sociology, University of Essex, who are great people and who continue
to produce work in the spirit of the radical tradition from which the
University was born.
Final thanks to Liz for her ideas, laughter, love, and support. Love
always to my children Isobel and Nina.
1 Introduction
What Is AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most nebulous technologies in
contemporary capitalism. It has come to stand for a wide variety of
machines, automations, simulations, and speculations. Intelligent assis-
tants such as Alexa and Cortana, Machine Learning (ML), cyborgs,
robots, expert systems, downloaded minds, automata, self-driving
cars, pattern recognition, transhumanists, post-humanists, semantic
nets, neural nets, natural language processing, godlike consciousnesses,
and future automated existential threats are all parts of what might be
called AI. In many ways there is nothing new about AI. Humans have
always imagined enchanted objects and mechanical devices that might
approximate some form of consciousness. Cave, Dihal and Dillon (2020)
span human history in bringing together fictional and non-fictional
accounts, of ‘AI Narratives’. Several chapters in their collected volume
identify pre-capitalist accounts of AI from Greek philosophy and the
Middle Ages. Although these are not AI as we might understand it, these
conceptions of intelligent, reasoning, or conscious ‘things’ are already
embedded in a historical mode of production (slavery or feudalism). In
contrast, contemporary AI is largely a capitalist technology and (as I
argue in Chapter 6) we often look at advanced AI not as a slave or a
serf but as an owned machine (as part of capital) and speculatively as a
future conscious, or even ‘labouring’, entity.
The contemporary history of AI (Woolbridge, 2020) makes clear that
it is an over-burdened and contested concept. From the work of Turing
until the development of semantic AI in what Woolbridge (2020, p.47)
refers to the ‘Golden Age’ (from 1956 to 1974), there was an emphasis
on ‘General AI’ with the prioritisation of general skills across a wide
range of domains including perception, problem-solving, planning,
and understanding. The perceived failures of this ‘Golden Age’, as
these higher-order problems proved to be extremely challenging, led to
a narrowing of the focus of AI (‘narrow AI’). AI technologies such as
expert systems (which combined AI with human reasoning to address
DOI: 10.4324/9781003081654-1
