Technology, Employment and the Path to End Discrimination – a Polemic

Over a comparatively short period the locution ‘going for growth’ has migrated from the purely political arena into common vernacular discourse, invoked by both the left and right of the UK political spectrum (Rosamond, 2019). Such phraseology inferring a determined focus by those both in – and aspiring to power, to move the organs of the state towards an instituted path of national material economic growth. The political economic logics – all agreed upon – accords priority to the economic imperative of growth. Recognised across the spectrum as essential to the future fiscal health and social stability of the state, as it negotiates the post-Brexit vicissitudes of global competition.

Substantively, twin key essential elements to growth reside in the ability of the state to capture – through internal and external processes, vital investment streams. These streams coupled to harnessing technological innovation, result in the creation of new products, services and processes. Being crucial for generating high value-added jobs, which in turn, significantly contribute to the taxable income of the UK Exchequer.

However, this relationship is composite and structured. Indeed, technological advancement, which often accompanies the corporate sector, inclines to cluster in silos of entrenched economic and industrial capital (Garnsey, & Heffernan, 2005; Smith, & Ibrahim, 2006). Characteristically, having latent effects on social structure, as noted by Tony Benn in his famous words, ‘science and technology are just the latest expression of power and that those who control them have become the new bosses’ (Benn, 1971: 23). With this assertion in mind, we can ask to what extent has this critique of technology – when mapped to deterministic silos, as noted by luminaries such as Benn – played out in lieu of the increasing march towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) and governance structures which afford little input from lay persons affected by the technologies?

In this conference paper, I aim to problematise the left/right rhetoric of ‘growth’ as it pertains to AI, and its copiously vaulted and promised affordances of the zero-sum equation of growth. By employing the late Tony Benn’s critique of technology (Benn, 1979 [1971]: 23), through formative structure (Benn, 2003), this paper asks a series of probing and polemical questions the sector need be mindful of as the technology increasingly permeates through our private and working lives.

More information can be found here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/news/jeremy-corbyn-and-yanis-varoufaki...