Marta Lorimer

Time for a (long - apologies)🧵 summarizing the findings! The paper was born out of a shared annoyance with some of the wild claims flying around about AI. Things like 'AI could destroy or save humanity'. For a recent example, see e.g., this piece in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

Thanks Matthias (also for your original comments)!

Thanks Abby! Sharing offices is sometimes a good thing.

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Link again, for good measure: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... It's fully Open Access as well, so anyone can read it.

This was a really fun paper to write - we spent several hours just chatting in the office Cristobal and I shared at the LSE (and the remaining hours at the pub), and came up with a paper that none of us could have written individually. We'll have to go back to the pub for the sequel.

TL;DR? AI may wall be a transformative technology, but we should be wary of (many of) the claims that are being made about it. These claims are both political and depoliticizing, and risk skewing the debate about what kind of future we should pursue.

The appeal to urgency further reduces the space to imagine, let alone bring about, alternative futures. Democracy needs time and collective involvement, while emergencies concentrate power in the hands of experts and decision-makers.

Many of these claims overstate the speed at which AI is developing & create narratives of certainty where scientific knowledge is significantly less certain. They are, in other words, not technical claims, but political ones that colonize the future & seek to spur action in their desired direction.

Finally, we look at temporal themes. Discourses on AI portray it as a force in motion, which is changing societies and will do so even more quickly and radically in the future. The claim of a sudden acceleration prepares the ground for demands to act urgently to speed it along, or halt it.

These assumptions, we argue, are problematic to the extent that they uncritically reflect key pillars of a certain form of liberal capitalism and its depoliticizing tendencies.

A third set of themes we identify are economic ones. Economic discourses on AI have tended to portray the development of the technology as essentially linked to a specific conception of what economic reality is and, perhaps more importantly, to a specific conception of what that reality ought to be.

Presenting AI in such terms ascribes it agential qualities that remove responsibility from humans for creating the technology in the first place, and presents human agency as purely reactive. Doing so, we argue, it promotes a form of politics that leaves very limited space for political choice.

We then discuss agency. Here we find a peculiar situation of agency without responsibility. One the one hand, AI is described as potentially escaping human control. At the same time, the development of AI also becomes an opportunity to reassert human agency and use it to direct the future of AI.

At the same time, those who say that AI affects humanity underplay the differential effect of AI on individuals and collectives. This makes it harder for specific groups to mobilise around the aspect of AI that affects them.

We start with claims about the nature & comparability of human and artificial intelligence. We argue that claims about the comparability of human and artificial intelligence fail to recognize fundamental differences between human and artificial intelligence.

We develop this argument looking at four sets of themes in contemporary public pronouncements on AI, and their underlying assumptions.

In a nutshell, we argue that AI is being presented as something more than what its ‘technical’ specifications would warrant; however, this is happening in a way that limits the space for democratic engagement with, and control of, the technology itself.

We found these claims annoying for different reasons, ranging from them being technically inaccurate to politically dubious. So we got our heads together and wrote a paper that weaves together history of ideas, AI research and critical discourse studies as applied to political claims.

Time for a (long - apologies)🧵 summarizing the findings! The paper was born out of a shared annoyance with some of the wild claims flying around about AI. Things like 'AI could destroy or save humanity'. For a recent example, see e.g., this piece in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

A philosopher and a neuroscientist walk into a bar and say 'we should write a paper on AI'. Ten years later, a political scientist (?) joins them and says 'I want in - let's write it'. Delighted to see finally this piece out in Big Data & Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

A philosopher and a neuroscientist walk into a bar and say 'we should write a paper on AI'. Ten years later, a political scientist (?) joins them and says 'I want in - let's write it'. Delighted to see finally this piece out in Big Data & Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Linking Euroscepticism and Populism Joint Sessions of Workshops 2026, 7 – 10 April, University of Innsbruck

⚙️ #ecprjs26 Workshop directors 🎬 @andreadis.bsky.social & @sofiavasilopoulou.bsky.social
💡 Seeks Papers that analyse the critical interplay between #populism and Euroscepticism
✔️ @ecprpovb.bsky.social endorsed
⌛ Submit by 10 Dec buff.ly/zHXfdwM

#Polisky #CallforPapers #EuropeanUnion

The season where GWR discovers that it rains in the UK is back upon us. My train is so cancelled, it’s not even on the board anymore.

🇫🇷📊 Le "front républicain" existe-t-il encore ?

Dans @lemonde.fr d'hier, j’analysais des données récentes @ipsosfrance.bsky.social sur la capacité de la gauche et du centre à faire barrage au RN 👇

Europe’s Populist Condition Europe’s Populist Condition; Challenging the notion that populism is an anomaly in European politics, this book argues that the main threat to democracy is the exclusionary nature of European democrat...

With just a few weeks until publication, it's possible to pre-order my book in time for Xmas! For anyone who wants to read a decolonial approach to populism and understand why we are still so attached to the idea of 'populism'
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/europes-popu... @brisunipress.bsky.social

Where will Trump's fight with Venezuela go next? - Monocle Our panel assess reports that US action against the Bolivarian republic might be imminent after all, possibly against targets believed...

Latest Daily on Monocle Radio. @mlorimer.bsky.social and Andrew Thompson on the imminent - or not - US invasion of Venezuela, and our report from the World Travel Market in London. monocle.com/radio/shows/...

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies: Vol 63, No S1 Click on the title to browse this issue

The JCMS Annual Review 2024 is now out! Several great contributions, including a piece by @leoniedejonge.bsky.social, Marianna Griffini & myself on far right mainstreaming in the French & Dutch elections of 23/24. Thank you to the editors for all their work!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14685965...

Can mainstreaming of the far right help normalise undemocratic practices? @mlorimer.bsky.social & Matteo Cavallaro explore the case of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, showing how the party still displays elements of continuity with its neofascist predecessor. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/ElYnx4u

Join me and Stijn van Kessel at Queen Mary University of London, as we present our book on populist radical party organisation and activism. Corina Lacatus will act as discussant - link to registration below!

What Brothers of Italy shares with its post-fascist predecessors Does Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy share similarities with its post-fascist predecessors? New research finds a mixed picture of continuity and change.

Also exists in a compact, blog post format: blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2...