The Machine Doesn't Stop
How 'woke' is AI?
In making sense of the current debate on Artificial Intelligence ii might be useful to take another look at the concept of the ‘General Intellect’ which Marx sets out in a text known as the ‘Fragment on Machines’ in his Grundrisse of 1858 (which lay unpublished for 100 years). Marx conducts a thought experiment. Assuming a society consisting only of workers and capitalists, market competition compels capitalists to introduce new machines and thus acquire extra surplus value. The innovators increase their profits and drive their slower-moving or under-resourced competitors out of business. The increasing investment in fixed capital is accompanied by the lessening of value produced by workers in society as a whole.
‘General Intellect’ denotes the accumulated knowledge of this society. The intellect becomes generalised to such an extent that it approaches the point where the division of mental and manual labour is universally seen as anachronistic. The development of social collaboration and free exchange of knowledge destabilises the market mechanism and the system of private property. Marx writes:
‘Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky high.’
The idea of the General Intellect has resonated in some unexpected places. Samuel McIlhagga in Foreign Policy (May 28, 2023) writes: ‘Marx shares an optimism with Silicon Valley about the potential for rapid technological change but is also far more skeptical about the short-term uncontrolled effects machines will have on human beings.’
Dario Amodei, boss of Anthropic, outlines the risks that might arise from powerful AI systems which would be “much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman or technologist”. Among those risks is the potential for individuals to develop biological weapons: “in the worst case even destroying all life on Earth… A disturbed loner [who] can perpetrate a school shooting, but probably can’t build a nuclear weapon or release a plague . . . will now be elevated to the capability level of the PhD virologist.”
Amodei also raises the potential of AI to “go rogue and overpower humanity” or to empower authoritarians and other bad actors, leading to “a global totalitarian dictatorship”. Anthropic, the chief rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, has clashed with David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, over the direction of US regulation. (Financial Times, 27 Jan 2026).
Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence tool Claude was used in the U.S. military’s deadly operation to abduct Venezuelan President Maduro and test new weaponry and bombs on several sites in Caracas. The deployment of Claude occurred through Anthropic’s partnership with data company Palantir Technologies. Anthropic’s usage guidelines actually prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance. However, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cast “woke” tech companies as a liability and treats any restrictions as an impediment to military effectiveness, is reviewing its partnership with Anthropic: the Pentagon wont “employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars.” (Wall Street Journal, 15 Feb 2026).
On 12 December 2025 Trump signed an executive order, aimed at blocking states from enforcing their own AI regulations. This a big win for the technology giants who see individual states’ efforts to regulate AI as “onerous”: throwing up barriers to US tech’s drive to dominate AI in the face of competition from China.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned last year about the danger of the Trump administration consolidating all of the government’s information into a single searchable, AI-driven interface powered by Palantir. Now, says EFF
“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address… This revelation comes as ICE – which has gone on a surveillance technology shopping spree – floods Minneapolis with agents, violently running roughshod over the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike; President Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy military troops against protestors there. Other localities are preparing for the possibility of similar surges.”
In the latest drop of Epstein files Palantir founder Peter Thiel is revealed to having maintained a business relationship with Epstein - joint ownership of a venture capital firm - from 2014 to Epstein’s final arrest in 2019.
In Britain revelations of Peter Mandelson’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein have drawn attention to Palantir’s employment of Mandelson’s lobbying company, Global Counsel. Before he was sacked, Mandelson took Keir Starmer to meet Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp, at its Washington showroom. Palantir currently holds UK government contracts worth £670m, with its data-scraping software being installed in hospital trusts across the country as a centralised data management system. Palantir’s public sector deals, which also include a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence and with several police forces.