The Political Economy of AI

Undergraduate / Graduate

How does the widespread application of AI shift the boundary between skilled and unskilled labor in the workplace? How do users of AI make sense of their evolving knowledge and expertise as they are integrating AI into their craft? And what are the effects of these sectoral and individual shifts for how wealth and power accumulate in society as a whole? This course invites students to explore answers to these questions by centering the everyday collaboration between learning machines and highly credentialed workers in five global industries, each of which has a strong footprint in Chicago: academic research, architecture, journalism, marketing, and urban planning. Drawing on readings from labor economics, science and technology studies, political economy, and economic anthropology, students will prepare to participate in five tabletop exercises, each of which will be hosted by a UChicago alum at their Chicago offices. Students will alternate between serving as collaborators in and observers of a workflow that features a current industry-specific protocol for human/AI integration. In small groups, and with the help of post-observation interviews of our site hosts, students will reflect on their dual experiences as participants and observers. This reflection will culminate in a final written project, in which students will judge their everyday experience with AI in the context of larger debates about AI's opportunities and dangers.