Artificial Intelligence Inherits a Past. A Conversation with Gabriele Balbi
Journal
Quaderni di Teoria Sociale
ISSN-Digital
2724-0991
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2026-07
Author(s)
Abstract
In this interview, Prof. Gabriele Balbi reflects on the historical and material conditions of contemporary artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on his work as a media historian, the conversation resists the prevailing tendency to apprehend the present moment in AI as historically unprecedented and instead situates the current "summer" of generative AI within the longer trajectory of digitalization, the platform economy, and the cycles of hype through which "revolutionary" technologies have repeatedly been announced and absorbed. From this perspective, Balbi argues that generative AI is less a rupture than a continuation: heir to the financialization, extractivism, and ideological framings of earlier digital formations, it can know only what has already been written, even as it promises to author the future. The conversation considers the political economy of the major AI platforms, the materiality of computation, the geographies of innovation beyond the Sino-American duopoly, and the paradox of a technology that announces the future while reinstating the extractive logics of the nineteenth century.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Volume
5
Number
1
Start page
179
End page
194
Subject(s)
Division(s)
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
646-Articolo-875-1-10-20260626.pdf
Type
Main Article
Size
118.45 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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