{"id":5961,"date":"2025-08-28T16:20:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T15:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/?p=5961"},"modified":"2025-08-28T16:20:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T15:20:21","slug":"the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Political Economy of AI: a Syllabus"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.programmablemutter.com\/p\/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

HENRY FARRELL
\nJUL 12, 2025<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve noted occasionally before, one of the most potentially useful things that academics do is preparing syllabi, and hence organizing information about the world. I\u2019m not aware of any course syllabi on the political economy of AI: here\u2019s one, in draft form, to be taught to international policy MA students in the fall. Comments, suggestions or corrections warmly welcomed. As with other such courses, the idea of the course is not to promote my own ideas but to give students a (doubtlessly partial and imperfect) sense of some of the ideas and debates there are out there.<\/p>\n

Section I \u2013 AI Transition<\/p>\n

Week 1 – Different Stories about the AI Transition<\/p>\n

Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean (2025), AI 2027.<\/p>\n

Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor (2025), AI as Normal Technology (Knight Foundation).<\/p>\n

Henry Farrell, Alison Gopnik, Cosma Shalizi and James Evans (2025), \u201cLarge AI Models are Cultural and Social Technologies,\u201d Science.<\/p>\n

Helen Toner (2025), Unresolved Debates about the Future of AI, Rising Tide.<\/p>\n

Week 2 \u2013 The Empirics of the AI Transition<\/p>\n

Arjun Ramani and Zhendong Wang, \u201cWhy Transformative Artificial Intelligence is Really, Really Hard to Achieve,\u201d The Gradient, June 26, 2023.<\/p>\n

Andrew McAfee (2024), Generally Faster: The Economic Impact of Generative AI.<\/p>\n

Kristina McElheran, J. Frank Li, Erik Brynjolfsson, Zachary Kroff, Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia S. Foster and Nikolas Zolas (2023), \u201cAI Adoption in America: Who, What, and Where,\u201d National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 31788.<\/p>\n

Weixin Liang, Yaohui Zhang, Mihai Codreanu, Jiayu Wang , Hancheng Cao , and James Zou (2025), The Widespread Adoption of Large Language Model-Assisted Writing Across Society.<\/p>\n

Week 3 \u2013 The Business Models of the AI Transition<\/p>\n

Rich Sutton (2019), The Bitter Lesson.<\/p>\n

Karen Hao (2020), \u201cThe Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI\u2019s Bid to Save the World,\u201d MIT Technology Review, February 17, 2020.<\/p>\n

Andrew J. Lohn (2023), Scaling AI: Cost and Performance of AI at the Leading Edge, CSET.<\/p>\n

Brian Merchant (2024), AI Generated Business: The Rise Of AGI and the Rush to Find a Working Revenue Model (AI Now Institute).<\/p>\n

Section 2 \u2013 Inputs<\/p>\n

Week 4 \u2013 Capital<\/p>\n

Catherine Bracy (2025), \u201cChapter One: The Methodology. How Venture Capitalists Think,\u201d World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy (Dutton).<\/p>\n

Gregory C. Allen, Georgia Adamson, Lennart Heim, and Sam Winter-Levy (2025), The United Arab Emirates\u2019 AI Ambitions, CSIS.<\/p>\n

[READING TBD on how the AI labs raise money]<\/p>\n

Week 5 \u2013 Chips<\/p>\n

Chris Miller (2022), \u201cChapter 41: How Intel Forgot Innovation,\u201d Chip War: The Fight for the World\u2019s Most Critical Technology (Simon & Schuster).<\/p>\n

Saif M. Khan (2020), AI Chips: What They Are and Why They Matter (CSET).<\/p>\n

Jake Sullivan, Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the Special Competitive Studies Project Global Emerging Technologies Summit, September 16, 2022.<\/p>\n

Matt Sheehan and Sam Winter-Levy (2025), Chips, China, and a Lot of Money: The Factors Driving the DeepSeek AI Turmoil (Carnegie Endowment).<\/p>\n

Week 6 – Energy and Material Resources…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.programmablemutter.com\/p\/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus HENRY FARRELL JUL 12, 2025 As I\u2019ve noted occasionally before, one of the most potentially useful things that academics do is preparing syllabi, and hence organizing information about the world. I\u2019m not aware of any course syllabi on the political economy of AI: here\u2019s one, in draft form, to be taught to international policy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Political Economy of AI: a Syllabus | Artmaker Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Political Economy of AI: a Syllabus | Artmaker Blog\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Political Economy of AI: a Syllabus | Artmaker Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Political Economy of AI: a Syllabus | Artmaker Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Artmaker Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-08-28T15:20:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bruce Sterling\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/toshareproject.it\/artmakerblog\/\",\"name\":\"Artmaker Blog\",\"description\":\"on Toshareproject.it - 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