The proliferation of Generative Artificial Intelligence, and AI in general, demands a restructuring of the humanities. In Language Machines, Leif Weatherby has convincingly argued that generative AI is cultural, which forces the homo symbolicus to sit with its mechanical language partners and to radically ponder its own position within the different relations embedded in language. Following this logic, the misaligning moments that arise when engaging with AI, such as AI hallucinations, ought to be read as language machines defying human control, rather than as the failure of the servant. Sitting with AI, we can perhaps indeed harvest a moment of singularity that breaks humans free from the confines of liberal humanism so intertwined with capitalist logic. Indeed, if generative AI is cultural, how much can it be made political? The answers from the left are largely unsatisfactory at the moment, with no shortage of scholars and researchers buying into the technocratic logic of existential crises that fetishize AI as an abstract subject while ignoring the technocapitalism that is steadily at work, continuously intensifying ecological crises, job insecurity, and labor rights violations.

More than ever, we need a refreshed thing theory that neither treats AI as a superhuman threat nor as a subaltern subject in need of saving. At this moment, we encounter not only a lack but also an opportunity to, rather than seizing the means of production, unite with the means of production. On top of being cultural and social, dare we dream of a "socialist" AI? This panel invites proposals that rethink how social relations can be challenged and rethought in relation to artificial intelligence. Topics include, but are not limited to:

AI beyond LLMs

Thing Theory

Object as comrade, comrade as object

Social and cultural AI

AI alignment

Technocapitalism and Technofeudalism

AI Race

US-China Relations Surrounding Technology