The AI world-system: Uneven development,socio-ecological appropriation,and emergent resistance in the longue durée of capitalism

Abstract

This article conceptualizes the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as a new phase in the historical evolution of capitalist world-ecology, termed the AI world-system. Drawing on world-systems analysis and world-ecology, it argues that AI-driven capitalism reconfigures longstanding dynamics of uneven development, ecological appropriation, monopoly power, and the global division of labor. The article identifies data, computational capacity, advanced semiconductors, cloud infrastructures, and intellectual property as strategic assets that underpin contemporary AI accumulation and remain concentrated in core regions of the world-economy. Peripheral and semi-peripheral regions are incorporated through resource extraction, data generation, digital labor, and infrastructural dependency. The analysis examines the intermediary role of the semi-periphery and explores emergent forms of anti-systemic resistance across labor, ecological, and epistemic domains. By situating AI within the longue durée of capitalism, the article demonstrates how technological innovation, geopolitical hierarchy, and socio-ecological relations are reorganized through the contemporary AI world-system.