The AI Fetish: When Wooden Brains Begin to Think

This article examines how artificial intelligence has become fetishized in contemporary discourse, being imagined as an autonomous force rather than crystallized collective human labor. Drawing on Marx's theory of commodity fetishism and critical AI studies, the paper analyzes how the apparent agency of AI systems masks their dependence on human labor. It thus challenges individualistic models of intelligence as computation, favoring an understanding of cognition as fundamentally social and historically situated, drawing on authors such as Vygotsky and Ilyenkov. The paper argues that the collective intelligence crystallized in these systems belongs to humanity as a whole, and must be reclaimed, since AI is too powerful for society to leave in the hands of the tech oligopoly. It advocates for a public AI under democratic control, recognizing that the struggle over AI is inseparable from broader struggles against exploitation, for climate justice, and for genuine democracy.