AI-driven corporate oligopolies reshape global power: How extractive data regimes entrench inequality
Original framing: “The new AI-based world order” — Financial Times
Gig workers in Kenya and India, whose labor trains AI models, report poverty wages and algorithmic management that mimics colonial-era indenture. Black and Indigenous communities face disproportionate surveillance through facial recognition and predictive policing, with no recourse. The 'AI divide' exacerbates global inequality, as Global South nations lack access to compute power while their data is extracted for Northern profits. Movements like the 'Data Justice League' demand reparative frameworks, yet are excluded from policy tables dominated by tech elites.
The Financial Times' framing of an 'AI-based world order' obscures how this regime is not an organic evolution but a deliberate consolidation of power by techno-financial elites, replicating colonial extraction through data and cognitive labor.
This system is propped up by regulatory capture, financial speculation, and the erasure of Indigenous and Southern epistemologies, which could offer alternative models of knowledge stewardship. Historical parallels to past monopolies—from the East India Company to Standard Oil—reveal a pattern of infrastructure control dictating global hierarchy, now mediated through algorithms and cloud computing. The marginalized voices of gig workers, Indigenous communities, and Global South researchers are not just affected by this order but are actively resisting it, demanding reparative justice and democratic control. The path forward requires dismantling AI monopolies, redistributing compute power, and centering Indigenous and Southern-led innovation—transforming AI from a tool of oligarchy into a commons for collective flourishing.