From welfare to tenant state? State-tech relations in an age of AI

How should we make sense of state-tech relations in an age of platformisation and AI? While much has been said about data-driven governance and the technological features of platforms and AI, we still lack an adequate understanding of the wider context in which they operate and what this means for the role and transformations of the state. In this talk, I engage with four central themes for such an understanding – governmentality, infrastructure, rentierism, and political regulation – in order to advance an argument about the advent of a new institutional form I refer to as a ‘tenant state’. The tenant state, I argue, encompasses features and dependencies that pose risks to the welfare state that may be distinct from neoliberalism and privatisation that have dominated welfare discussions in the past, and may therefore require different responses.

Bio: Professor Lina Dencik is Professor and University Research Leader in AI Justice at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Co-Founder/Director of the Data Justice Lab and has published widely on digital media and the politics of data, with a particular focus on governance and resistance. Her recent publications include Data Justice (2022, Sage), The Media Manifesto (2020, Polity) and Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (2018, Polity).

Venue: Byrne House, University of Exeter (spaces limited)

Virtual: via Zoom

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