The Inequality Regime of AI: Power, Allocation, and the Struggle for Justice (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture)

Does artificial intelligence (AI) empower humanity, or does it merely automate the stratifications of the past? In The Inequality Regime of AI, the authors offer a critical sociology of artificial power, arguing that AI represents a fundamental ontological shift in how social life is organized, valued, and governed.

Moving beyond the traditional digital divide, this book introduces the concept of the Inequality Regime of AI. The authors trace a profound transition from inequalities of participation to inequalities of prediction, where social power is concentrated in the hands of those who own and control the means of cognition. Through a global lens, the volume exposes the hidden architectures of the algorithmic age: from the predictive cage of automated governance and the digital feudalism of rentier platforms to the extractive computational metabolism that binds AI to planetary resource depletion. Drawing on Southern epistemologies and the concept of techno-colonialism, the book reveals how AI stabilizes social hierarchies while presenting them as objective, efficient, and inevitable. However, the authors do not stop at critique. They advocate for a “praxis of freedom”, proposing a shift from extractive models toward redistributive infrastructures and the algorithmic commons.

Grounded in a relational ethics of care and critical literacy, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students of sociology, media studies, political science, and the ethics of technology seeking to understand, and contest, the new architectures of global power.

Massimo Ragnedda is a Professor in Media and Communications at Sharjah University, UAE.

Maria Laura Ruiu is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication at the American University of Sharjah, UAE.