Victoria Fleming

Reconsidering the digital sublime in the age of artificial intelligence

Describing the development and consolidation of the internet, the dotcom boom and bust, and post-2008 financial crash investments in tech, Vincent Mosco theorised the ‘digital sublime’ to describe the experience through which technical systems inspire awe and overwhelm at their apparent promises. As AI is further integrated within our daily lives, we need to heed Mosco’s call to interrogate the productive capacities of myth-making around emergent technologies. Drawing on recent work on the political economy of AI, we argue that the sublime myth of AI forms a crucial logic organising contemporary capitalism, from the geopolitics of economic and military confrontation to the micropolitics of everyday life.