With the proliferation of AI, human skills are increasingly devalued and at the same time commodified, while the unique qualities of human labor are increasingly erased and the potential for resisting exploitation is reduced. In this context, reskilling programs for workers are a cover-up designed to divert attention from the real problem: a system that rewards capital at the expense of human labor, as Giorgi Vachnadze argues.
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“The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from skill the ability to access wealth.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI), that proverbial ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ has been marketed as the ultimate solution to all our problems. It is the modern-day oracle offering endless promises of progress: enhanced productivity, streamlined work processes, and even a path to personal meaning through algorithmic precision. It is a pitch that corporate elites – especially those CEOs living in constant anxiety, thanks to Luigi Mangione – are all too eager to accept. This new cybernetic pastoral is a charming solution, promising to optimize work while making it seem more ‘human’ or even more fulfilling. The apparatus, as it is often presented, sells itself.
Algorithmic panopticism
But from a biopolitical point of view, AI is anything but a neutral force. It is not merely an innocent tool for efficiency. It is, rather, the latest mechanism in the capitalist apparatus of surveillance and control. In this sense, AI is not some revolutionary technology that will radically alter the fabric of society. On the contrary, it is seamlessly woven into the pre-existing techno-bureaucratic control systems that define modern capitalism. AI is both the watchman and the watched: its purpose is to enforce a new mode of governance, where workers are subject to algorithms that monitor and regulate every aspect of their labor. As J. Browning astutely points out in a Facebook post: “The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from skill the ability to access wealth.”
At the heart of this dynamic lies deskilling: an intentional reduction of labor’s value that enables the automation of once-skilled tasks. Through deskilling, AI contributes to the grand capitalist project of maximizing profit by cutting labor costs and streamlining production. Far from the liberating force that AI proponents often suggest – or the apocalyptic force imagined by dystopian thinkers – AI is a tool for perpetuating the very inequalities that define the capitalist system. It is the latest addition to a toolbox that seeks to consolidate power at the top while further disempowering the working class.
Deskilling: The erasure of subjectivity
Deskilling is not an incidental byproduct of technological development – it is, in fact, one of the primary objectives of integrating AI into the workforce. Labor, as a fundamental force in the creation of both material goods and subjectivity, is central to the human experience. The more one works, the more deeply embedded the self becomes in the labor process. As technology reshapes work, it reshapes the worker’s very sense of identity. In this context, the process of algorithmic subjectivation is rendered total, as the worker is reduced to little more than a machine operator, a prompt-giver to an algorithm.
Consider the example of the professional AI ‘instructor’ who might once have been a highly skilled educator or craftsman. Today, in a world where AI has assumed many of the roles once held by humans, every instructor becomes, in essence, interchangeable – an amateur programmer who issues commands to an AI without the need for the expertise that once defined professional skill. This is no benign technological development; it is a radical transformation. Skill itself becomes a commodity, flattened by the forces of automation. The long-standing Marxian distinction between use-value and exchange-value comes back into focus here: as skill is leveled and commodified, labor becomes increasingly indistinguishable, and its unique, human qualities are erased.
Deskilling, then, is not merely an unintended consequence of technological progress; it is the end goal of a system that seeks to reduce human labor to its most basic, repetitive forms. AI systems replace workers in skilled positions, relegating them to tasks that demand little more than basic mechanical activity. In the process, workers are stripped of their subjectivity – no longer creators or agents of their labor, but mere cogs in the automated machine.
AI and economic inequality: A grand disciplinary architecture
AI, then, functions as a perfect tool for perpetuating and deepening economic inequality. As automation becomes more pervasive, surplus value extraction becomes ever more efficient, with profits funneled into the pockets of corporate elites, tech barons, and oligarchs. Meanwhile, workers – especially those in low-skilled or vulnerable positions – are displaced or consigned to increasingly precarious forms of labor. This leads to a dramatic widening of the gap between those who control the means of production and those whose labor is rendered redundant.
The introduction of AI into the workplace is not a neutral or apolitical development. It is part of a broader biopolitical project in which capitalism seeks to regulate not only the labor process, but also the lifeworld of the individual worker. AI does not simply optimize production; it disciplines workers into accepting their marginalized roles within a broader, cybernetic regime. It monitors them, surveils them, and ultimately disempowers them by reducing their work to rote tasks performed under the watchful eye of algorithms.
In this landscape, the promises of ‘reskilling’ programs and the myth of ‘full automation’ become nothing more than distractions. These narratives, pushed by technocrats and corporate interests, attempt to conceal the underlying structural inequalities that AI exacerbates. Reskilling programs are painted as panaceas for workers displaced by automation. Yet, as anyone familiar with the economic realities of education and labor will know, such programs are little more than an attempt to mask the deep, systemic inequalities inherent in the capitalist mode of production. The smokescreen is thinning – reskilling is no solution; it is a cover-up, designed to deflect attention from the real problem: a system that rewards capital at the expense of human labor.
The myth of reskilling: A tool for compliance
Reskilling is often touted as the great remedy for the disruptions caused by automation. The rhetoric suggests that displaced workers can simply learn new skills, re-enter the workforce, and rise from the ashes of their former labor-process. But this narrative is fundamentally flawed. It overlooks the deep disparities in access to education, resources, and opportunities for meaningful career shifts. The technocrats and their PR managers would have us believe that reskilling is the key to solving the ‘problem’ of AI, all the while ensuring that the system of exploitation remains untouched.
In reality, reskilling programs are not designed to address the underlying causes of capitalist exploitation. Rather, they function as tools of compliance, designed to keep workers docile and obedient. Instead of challenging the system that displaces workers, these programs serve to make workers more adaptable to whatever new forms of exploitation corporations choose to impose. The structural issue is not that workers lack skills; the problem is that the system demands the displacement of human labor in favor of more abstract forms of capital. The myth of reskilling serves only to perpetuate this cycle of exploitation.
Cybernetic parrhesia: Resistance beyond illusions
The illusion of reskilling, upskilling, and the promise of ‘full automation’ fails to address the root cause of inequality. From a Foucauldian perspective, the real issue is not the workers’ ability to adapt to technology, but the way in which the discourse of adaptability itself coerces workers into accepting the inevitability of their dispossession. The solution lies not in adapting to the demands of AI, but in generating resistant, minority discourses that disrupt and subvert the dominant logic of capitalism. These micro-transgressions, however small, can serve as powerful critiques of the system and offer new pathways for social transformation.
Grassroots movements for the democratization of technology must emerge, pushing for alternatives that are not driven by the interests of the managerial class. Workers, communities, and activists must begin to reclaim the narrative, resisting the encroachment of AI as a means of further exploitation. Only through collective action, grounded in alternative forms of technology and governance, can we challenge the hegemony of the algocratic regime.
Conclusion: The AI-driven police state (written by ChatGPT)
AI, deskilling, and economic inequality are not isolated issues – they are symptoms of a deeper, systemic disease: capitalism itself. The introduction of AI into the workplace is not a neutral technological development; it is a deliberate strategy to consolidate power, disempower workers, and deepen economic inequality. Reskilling programs, far from solving these problems, only serve to mask the underlying dynamics of exploitation.
To truly challenge the current system, we must reject the illusion that AI will solve our problems. We must confront the capitalist structures that wield technology as a tool of control and demand a revolutionary transformation of society. Only then can we hope to harness the potential of AI for the collective good, rather than allowing it to further entrench the wealth and power of the few.