Matheson Lecture—Michael Hardt: Labor and the Automation of 'Intelligence'
Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author with Antonio Negri of several books, including Empire (Harvard UP, 2000). His most recent book is The Subversive Seventies (Oxford UP, 2023).
The point of departure of the lecture is to analyze how the current wave of digital automation, including the tools of generative AI and large language models, subordinates labor in the same manner as previous waves of capitalist automation. In some respects, however, today's machines present different relations to human society. Returning to some of the basic relations between human and machine opens some avenues for understanding how we can resist and fight back against the pressures of automation.