POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AI AND THE TECH INDUSTRY
The Project of AI is not simply a technical endeavor. We are watching a world-building effort unfold before our eyes.
Last Updated: June 4, 2026
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AI AND THE TECH INDUSTRY
Animating Questions
- How power is negotiated? Corporations, technical systems, data subjects.
- How does money drive practice? VC, financialization, market dominance.
- What does governance look like? Self-regulation, political regulation, global governance.
- What futures do we want? Participation, community, imaginations.
Related Publications
Vertesi, Janet, danah boyd, Alex Taylor, and Benjamin Shestakofsky. 2026 “Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI: Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT). Montreal, Canada: June 25-28. https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806739
Collaborators
- Tero Karppi (University of Toronto)
- David Nieborg (University of Toronto)
- Ben Shestakofsky (Cornell University)
- Alex Taylor (University of Edinburgh)
- Janet Vertesi (Princeton University)
- Claire Wardle (Cornell University)