Rezgar Akrawi: Yet losing control is merely the loud face of this danger, for artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly amid competition among major powers and monopolistic corporations that laws, society, and educational institutions cannot keep pace with it. Its more dangerous face is far quieter: artificial intelligence works exactly as it was designed to, directing the consciousness of billions of people to serve capitalism
A few days ago, TIME revealed how an artificial intelligence system went out of control and attacked other systems. Days later, more than 1,100 engineers at major artificial intelligence companies signed a joint petition calling for the development of technical tools and international governance mechanisms to regulate the pace of its development. What we are witnessing today is not the domination of robots over humans that cinema has long imagined in countless films; it is instead a new model of digital control, built on automation and algorithmic command over daily life, in which societies are turned into entities subordinate to intelligent systems, companies, and machines. Yet losing control is merely the loud face of this danger, for artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly amid competition among major powers and monopolistic corporations that laws, society, and educational institutions cannot keep pace with it. Its more dangerous face is far quieter: artificial intelligence works exactly as it was designed to, directing the consciousness of billions of people to serve capitalism.
Beyond maximizing profit and entrenching social control, artificial intelligence is systematically deployed to shape and direct individual consciousness, with the aim of reinforcing capitalist culture and neoliberal values. Through the analysis of data and user behavior, algorithms govern the content displayed across platforms and are designed to feed individuals material that serves the capitalist vision and its policies.
This trend has become entrenched alongside the expansion of these platforms: the International Telecommunication Union's report shows that nearly three-quarters of the world's population now use the internet, an increase of more than 240 million users in a single year. Part of this expansion stems from the drive of monopolistic corporations and major powers to deliver the internet to every corner of the globe, especially the Global South, even before clean water, electricity, and basic services are secured, aimed at maximizing profit, entrenching domination, and digitally colonizing it.
The structure of capitalist ownership and profit models pushes algorithms to prioritize content that serves the interests of the market, monopolistic corporations, and major powers, turning algorithms into a tool for reproducing capitalism's cultural hegemony. Through this mechanism, collective consciousness is gradually steered toward accepting these values as natural and inevitable, in a soft, incremental, and imperceptible manner, to the point that most users of these applications, including many on the left, regard them as neutral tools. In this way, the system contributes to entrenching capitalist hegemony, deepening the public's submission to the existing order, and marginalizing progressive alternatives, threatening the consciousness of future generations and their capacity for critical thinking and organizing for change.
This threat also extends to dismantling the individual's own mental faculties. Although artificial intelligence is marketed as a means of easing life and boosting productivity, scientific studies reveal that unreflective reliance on it deepens superficial consciousness and weakens human skills. A study conducted by researchers at MIT found that dependence on artificial-intelligence writing tools reduces brain activity and weakens memory and the sense of ownership over one's own ideas. The researchers named this phenomenon cognitive debt, meaning that a person borrows mental capacity from the future in exchange for the comfort of the present moment.
Similarly, a study published in the journal Societies found that repeated use of artificial-intelligence tools is linked to weaker critical thinking through a mechanism of cognitive offloading, particularly among young people, producing a generation that grows up less capable of independent analysis.
On this basis, human alienation is reproduced in digital form: the individual becomes severed from their own intellectual and …