This open access book develops a Marxist account of artificial labour. Using Marx’s definition of labour from Capital, Kelly proposes three possibilities for the future. The Standard Marxian Line denies that artificial labour is possible and instead predicts that AI will lead to overproduction, unemployment, and the need for capitalism to expand. Artificial Feudalism predicts that AI will generate artificial labour, but that it will remain enmeshed within existing platforms and property relations. Double Freedom for Robots proposes that capitalism will drive the development of bona fide artificial labourers: robots that are legally emancipated but practically dependent on capital.

Free Robot Labour uses Marxist theory to argue for a radical conclusion: AI won’t just increase the productivity of human labour, it will lead to the creation of machines capable of labouring.

Jamie Terence Kelly is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. He is the author of Framing Democracy: A Behavioral Approach to Democratic Theory (2012).