Can AI Break Out of Panglossian Neoliberalism?

Over the past fifteen years of observing tech development, I’ve found that terms I once used like “cyber-utopianism,” “Internet-centrism,” and “techno-solutionism” fail to fully capture Big Tech’s grip on our institutional and infrastructural imagination. By this, I mean the public’s inability to envision essential information services outside the confines of Silicon Valley’s venture-platform complex.

A new term is needed: Panglossian neoliberalism. Championed by venture capitalists, tech CEOs, and startup founders, this credo asserts that we already live in the best of all possible worlds (reflecting its Panglossian aspects) and that there is no alternative to the market-driven provision of our tech infrastructures (reflecting its neoliberal aspect). The essence of this ideology is distilled in the recent Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen, the prominent venture capitalist, who flatly states: “free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy.”

Source: Can AI Break Out of Panglossian Neoliberalism? – Boston Review