The Algorithmic Transformation of the Homo Economicus

This paper investigates the way in which the rise of Artificial Intelligence catalyzes a significant change in the figure of Homo Economicus, the key agent of the neoliberal order. Algorithmic reason, inscribed in machine learning, predictive platforms, and surveillance technologies, increasingly assumes a function of shaping, assessing, and governing subjects with a view to producing behaviors that can no longer be referred to a human reason and will. This argument argues that Artificial Intelligence is not only a tool of neoliberal politics but rather its technology of enforcement, mapping out a new frontier of reason, responsibility, and subjectivity. A critical analysis of the concepts of governmentality, predictive politics, and algorithmic normativity is used here to support the thesis of a new figure of the neoliberal order, one in which the algorithm has taken over the human subject as a new main reference, thus pointing towards an “end of anthropocentrism” concerning the constitution of economic and political subjectivity.This paper investigates the way in which the rise of Artificial Intelligence catalyzes a significant change in the figure of Homo Economicus, the key agent of the neoliberal order. Algorithmic reason, inscribed in machine learning, predictive platforms, and surveillance technologies, increasingly assumes a function of shaping, assessing, and governing subjects with a view to producing behaviors that can no longer be referred to a human reason and will. This argument argues that Artificial Intelligence is not only a tool of neoliberal politics but rather its technology of enforcement, mapping out a new frontier of reason, responsibility, and subjectivity. A critical analysis of the concepts of governmentality, predictive politics, and algorithmic normativity is used here to support the thesis of a new figure of the neoliberal order, one in which the algorithm has taken over the human subject as a new main reference, thus pointing towards an “end of anthropocentrism” concerning the constitution of economic and political subjectivity.