Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence"—a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations. Here he is interviewed by Richard Hames, audio producer at Novara Media.
Matteo Pasquinelli's new book, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence, is out now: versobooks.com/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=verso_video
Matteo Pasquinelli is associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, and the South Atlantic Quarterly, amongst other journals.
0:00 Intro
0:39 What is an algorithm
6:03 Algorithms are social not natural
8:56 Large language models (ChatGPT)
13:09 AI and the social division of labour
16:26 Babbage and machines
18:00 IQ tests and psychometrics
19:39 AI and automation
26:39 All labour is logic
29:30 Measuring intelligence is reductive
35:07 What is the political response? Provincialising AI
37:59 AI as a snapshot
43:32 AI vs actual humanity
45:41 Connectionism and AI utopianism
49:58 Research, regulation and risk
What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence"—a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations. Here he is interviewed by Richard Hames, audio producer at Novara Media.
Matteo Pasquinelli's new book, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence, is out now: versobooks.com/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=verso_video
Matteo Pasquinelli is associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, and the South Atlantic Quarterly, amongst other journals.
0:00 Intro
0:39 What is an algorithm
6:03 Algorithms are social not natural
8:56 Large language models (ChatGPT)
13:09 AI and the social division of labour
16:26 Babbage and machines
18:00 IQ tests and psychometrics
19:39 AI and automation
26:39 All labour is logic
29:30 Measuring intelligence is reductive
35:07 What is the political response? Provincialising AI
37:59 AI as a snapshot
43:32 AI vs actual humanity
45:41 Connectionism and AI utopianism
49:58 Research, regulation and risk
