Presentation 1
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AI AS PLATFORM: INFRASTRUCTURES, POWER, AND THE AI INDUSTRY
Fernando N. van der Vlist(1), Anne Helmond(2), Dieuwertje M. R. Luitse(1), Bernhard Rieder(1), Sam Hind(3), Max Kanderske(4)
1: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2: Utrecht University, The Netherlands; 3: University of Manchester, United Kingdom; 4: University of Siegen, Germany
The artificial intelligence (AI) sector is experiencing rapid growth, with a projected market size of $1.3 trillion by 2032 according to industry reports. The landscape shifted significantly with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, prompting major players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, alongside popular apps such as TikTok and Snapchat, to make substantial investments in AI. There has been an influx of new AI products and updates, reshaping the industry’s structure and scale. Additionally, there has been a surge in acquisitions and investments in AI startups, particularly by Big Tech firms. Furthermore, partnerships between AI and major tech companies have proliferated, solidifying their dominant positions. In fact, as Kak and Myers West succinctly state, ‘There is no AI without Big Tech’, raising critical issues around industry concentration and the political economy of AI.
This panel posits that the driving force behind these transformative shifts is the evolution of AI as a platform. This evolution effectively propels the platformisation of AI, facilitating the integration of AI across diverse industry sectors. The resultant ‘industrialisation’ of AI marks the expansion of AI systems across various sectors and industries, triggering investments in necessary computational resources and posing challenges for governing AI. In short, this underscores that AI is much more than just a standalone application or tool, such as ChatGPT; it is a foundational technical system that underpins a broad array of apps and services.
In this context, the panel recognises the recent ‘infrastructural turn’ in media and internet studies, deliberately steering away from speculative discussions about the future impacts of AI. Instead, the emphasis shifts towards a focus on the ‘mundanity and ordinariness of existing systems’. This highlights the importance of studying the foundational infrastructure, tools, and frameworks that shape AI development. Furthermore, it requires an understanding of the associated supply chains, investments, acquisitions, forms of ownership and support, control mechanisms, and the broader political economy surrounding AI. Such perspectives have been developed, for example, to study AI’s industry relations in healthcare, the global digital marketing and advertising industries, journalism, or the automotive industry.
The panellists examine how AI may be viewed as a platform, presenting critical perspectives on the platformisation of AI and its implications for industry relations and the media landscape. Through four distinct studies, they highlight: (1) the influence of platforms on the emerging AI ecosystem and their consolidation of power through reliance on cloud infrastructure, (2) the evolution of cloud infrastructure in the political economy of AI, (3) the actualisation of AI as a platform with ‘general-purpose’ applications, and (4) how challenges in machine vision shape innovation in AI. Each contribution revolves around a central question: How is AI, particularly within the AI sector, evolving under the influence of platform logic? In doing so, the panellists offer valuable insights informed by platform theory and methodologies, exploring their relevance for a comprehensive examination of AI and the broader AI sector. Furthermore, their perspectives provide methodological insights into understanding the material conditions and critical political economy of AI as a platform.
Collectively, these studies seek to advance the critical discourse on AI and its political economy, with a specific emphasis on the AI industry. They shed light on the evolving landscape of AI industry relations and dependencies within the platform ecosystem, tracing how these relationships have transformed over time.
