Industriepolitik im Zeitalter künstlicher Intelligenz: Zur Renaissance interventionistischer Staatlichkeit

Abstract

In recent years, many governments have developed national strategies and investment programs to promote so-called artificial intelligence (AI). We read these programs as blueprints of specific techno-futures with a common goal: states reinvent themselves as initiators and managers of socio-technological change and are therefore developing more interventionist models in the context of industrial policy. In our text we analyse the specific modes of intervention and their normative backgrounds outlined in the AI initiatives of three countries – the United States, China and Germany. We observe convergence in a regulation model centred around what in political economy is called a Decentralized Development State which, however, is being developed within the framework of specific national path dependencies. We frame this as a functional connection between socio-technical visions of the future and attempts at political legitimation.