One of the results of the rapid deployment of Artificial Intelligence is an increased focus on the relation between humans and machines.

The Economist has published a podcast of an interview with Nobel prize-winning author asking about what his new book “Klara and the Sun” reveals about people’s relationship with machines. They say “he argues that people’s relationship to machines will eventually change the way they think of themselves as individuals.”

And the University of Westminster Press have published a new book, Marx and Digital Machines: Alienation, Technology, Capitalism, by Mike Healy. This book explores the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the digital environment, they say, “technology offers all manner of promises, yet habitually fails to deliver. This failure often arises from numerous problems: the proficiency of the technology or end-user, policy failure at various levels, or a combination of these. Solutions such as better technology and more effective end-user education are often put into place to solve these failures.”

Mike Healy argues that such approaches are inherently faulty drawing upon qualitative research informed by Marx’s theory of alienation.

The book which is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivatives 4.0 license with copyright retained by the author(s) is available for sale in paperback format or for free download in a variety of digital formats.

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