Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Data Centre
Many-Body Problem
Artificial Intelligence
Capital
Embodiment
The Many-Body Problem of the Data Centre
🤖 AI Summary
This study challenges the long-standing assumption of artificial intelligence as disembodied, proposing instead that data centers constitute AI’s embodied form, exhibiting quasi-organic characteristics. Through philosophical inquiry, political-economic critique, and socio-technical analysis, the paper examines how data centers, under the logic of capital, integrate automated systems with human labor, functioning as “multi-bodies” that channel human desire while lacking desires of their own. The research reveals how capital, via market mechanisms, deliberately blurs the boundary between organism and machine to enable a unified valuation of intelligence, thereby reconfiguring AI’s ontology and its role within contemporary labor regimes.
📝 Abstract
Modern Artificial Intelligence is often framed as limited by its own disembodiment, as if giving it a body would unlock its true potential. We argue to the contrary that it is the Data Centre that is, in many cases, the body of the AI. At the same time, the Data Centre is part of the labouring body of Capital and possesses staggering organismic qualities when seen through a biological lens. We elucidate the organic analogy and identify the many-body problem that stems from the Data Centre being a non-unique, universal form of embodiment. We identify the intimate connection between computation and human desires in how the Data Centre archives, serves, and computes on data born to the desires of humans. Strikingly, while the Data Centre echoes the ghosts of human desires, it acts without desire of its own. The organismic analogy begins to split at its seams, but Capital does not care. Automata and human labour are priced into the market much the same. We argue that through the pricing of artificial intelligence Capital distils most clearly the value of intelligence and allows for its comparison across the organism - mechanism divide.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
data centre
embodiment
many-body problem
artificial intelligence
capital
🔎 Similar Papers
No similar papers found.
💼 Related Jobs
