The Inequality Regime of AI
Power, Allocation, and the Struggle for Justice
Massimo Ragnedda author Maria Laura Ruiu author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:15th Jun '26
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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.
"In The Inequality Regime of AI, Ragnedda and Ruiu provide much-needed foundational sociological grammar for our algorithmic era. Moving the field far beyond the ‘digital divide’, they generate a fresh foundational concept: the insidious 'AI stratification spiral' through which historical inequalities are mathematically naturalized and automated. By conceptualizing AI as a regime that monopolizes the 'means of cognition,' Ragnedda and Ruiu reveal how the 'allocative turn' in social institutions functions as a new form of symbolic violence. As such their work does not merely treat AI technologies; rather it is a critical mapping of how predictive power reorganizes the social order, making it an essential text for any scholar of social stratification and global power."
-- Laura Robinson,Professor of Sociology, Santa Clara University, USA
"This is a timely intervention that frames AI not as a neutral tool marred by occasional bias, but as a structuring force in a new Inequality Regime. By shifting the focus from participation gaps to asymmetries in prediction, the book argues that power now lies with those who control the means of cognition. Concepts such as the Predictive Cage, digital feudalism, and computational metabolism offer a rigorous vocabulary for understanding how automated systems stabilize hierarchy while extracting both social and planetary resources. The authors do not stop at critique: their call for redistributive infrastructures and an algorithmic commons is concrete, ambitious, but mostly necessary. This is an important contribution that supports shaping debates across technology, politics, and society."
-- Alexander van Deursen,Professor of Digital Inequality and Director of the Centre for Digital Inclusion, University of Twente, the Netherlands
ISBN: 9781041173687
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 510g
180 pages