Critical Theory and Artificial Intelligence

Researcher: Geoff M. Boucher

Critical Theory and Artificial Intelligence is an ongoing research project that aims to provide a resource for Critical Theory researchers working on problems related to artificial intelligence, with particular focus on the application of current models to workplace situations.

  • The project will survey definitions of artificial intelligence and benchmarks for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) before briefly inspecting debates around Strong AI and machine self-consciousness. However, the purpose of this section is not a comprehensive review of the philosophical literature on artificial intelligence, but rather the development of accurately framed working definitions that can be used to understand and evaluate critical statements about AI.
  • It will survey Frankfurt School Critical Theory critiques of AI, with a view to understanding how researchers in this theoretical tradition have framed their evaluations of machine learning and its philosophical implications. The aim of this section is to situate the definitions provided in the first section of the research within a discursive framework of social and philosophical critique, and to identify any aspects of AI that have—as yet—not been strongly addressed within Critical Theory.
  • The project will then propose potential lines of critical research, framed by an understanding of the corporate development and implementation of AI as a deepening of instrumental rationality, occurring in the context of a likely new technological revolution. Understanding a central corporate objective in AI development as the replacement of human mental labour by machine learning processes makes it possible to grasp an important part of this technology in terms of exploitation and reification.

This research will not seek to document philosophical conjectures about AI and consciousness. It will also not discuss speculative breakthrough scenarios for accelerated development of artificial superintelligence.

Its primary interest lies in the social implications of the workplace application (including in higher education) of current and near-future (2030–2040) versions of generative AI (which may or may not be described by AI corporations as “AGI”).

About the Researcher:

Dr. Geoff M. Boucher is Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Deakin University. He currently researches the authoritarian personality from the perspective of critical theory and is an expert on Frankfurt School critical theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, as well as the work of Žižek and Lacan. He is the author of Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavoj Žižek (co-editor, 2005), The Charmed Circle of Ideology (Melbourne: Re-Press, 2008), The Times Will Suit Them: Postmodern Conservatism in Australia (with Matthew Sharpe) (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008), Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction (with Matthew Sharpe) (London: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), Adorno Reframed (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), Understanding Marxism (London: Acumen, 2012), Habermas and Literature (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), and Critical Theory and the Authoritarian Personality (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).

In addition, he is the author of more than 40 scientific publications in literary criticism, cultural studies, and social theory, and has published numerous articles on right-wing authoritarianism. His particular interest in AI concerns the anti-democratic implications of misaligned or unregulated “grokbots.”