The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence - from Fiction to Socio-Technological Reality?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Philipp Staab
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442365478

Since the 2010s, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have raised high expectations among investors and politicians due to their spectacular successes in object, speech and pattern recognition: On the one hand, studies predict the spread of AI technologies to cause considerable increases in productivity and additional economic growth; on the other hand, many observers warn against technological dependency and geostrategic dynamics that work in favour of the dominant digital corporations in the USA and China. In this context, dozens of countries have recently set up their own AI industry strategies and economic development programs to invest billions in the building of national AI innovation systems. In 2018, Germany and the EU finally published their own strategy papers on the promotion of AI technology in companies and research.According to initial analyses, the measures announced in these papers have a profound impact on the technological restructuring of the economy and thus continue a general trend towards active industrial policies. Does this intensified interaction of state and economy, the political economy of artificial intelligence, signify an institutional transformation of state capacities and economic structures?The overall goal of the project is an empirical investigation of technopolitical negotiation processes in the course of the development of AI in Germany and Europe. The analytical focus lies both on the governmental technology policies, which actively intervene in the emerging market for "AI made in Germany/Europe", and on competing economic actor coalitions, which in turn attempt to influence government interventions. Overall, the interactions between politics, business and science triggered by AI technologies as well as the possible consequences for the German economic structure will be analysed by means of a theoretical integration of socio-technological, innovation-theoretical and politico-economic approaches.The research process is divided into three thematic blocks: In the first step, the measures of the German-European AI technology policies are investigated by means of a document analysis and interviews in order to determine to what extent new state capacities are developed. In a second step, the interrelationship of the central actors in the AI innovation system will be researched on the basis of a network analysis, focusing on the formation of economic actor coalitions to influence state technology policies and the networking and division of labour between research institutions and companies. In the third step, a comparative case study of four business cooperations between industrial and ICT companies will be carried out to analyse the respective stage of technological development and the relationship between the two sectors. This way, the fundamental market dynamics in the context of AI are to be worked out as an external condition for policy development and as a field for intervention of state policies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants