Hype, Resistance, Power and Inequalities: Why Synthesizing Critical Perspectives Is Essential to AI Research

Abstract

This article proposes an integrated theoretical framework combining critical political economy and cultural studies to analyze AI and its societal implications. While political economy illuminates the structural inequalities and power concentrations that characterize AI capitalism, cultural studies reveals how individuals and communities negotiate, resist, and find agency within these systems. The framework addresses the limitations of applying either approach in isolation: political economy's potential for economic reductionism and cultural studies' risk of overlooking structural constraints. By combining these perspectives, we demonstrate how AI's impact operates simultaneously through macro-level power structures controlled by big tech corporations and micro-level practices of meaning-making, identity formation, and resistance among diverse communities. The integrated approach encompasses different dimensions: a structural analysis of AI ownership and control, an intersectional examination of AI power relations beyond class, an inquiry into AI discourses, an ethnographic approach to AI, and AI resistance and alternatives. This synthesis enables a more comprehensive understanding of how AI technologies both perpetuate existing inequalities and how communities can create spaces for alternative visions, offering valuable insights for researchers studying the complex sociotechnical dynamics of AI in society.