A stack made in heaven? Exploring AI-blockchain intersections and their implications for labour and value

Abstract

How have socio-technical practices in blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) communities shaped one another and society more widely? This article explores the different and overlapping materialities, practices, spaces and places that the two most hyped technologies of the 21st century are impacting and evolving within. Employing the concept and analogy of “the stack”, we show how Machine Learning (ML), and crypto-assets each developed separately and yet become deeply interconnected. In doing so, we pluralise the concept of the stack to trace how two techno-communities have cometh, collided and colluded (Three Cs) in ways that pose varying implications for labour and the enactment of value in hyper capitalist tech-driven economic geographies.