From apocalyptic dystopia to banal reality: A new materialist account of power-seeking, AI and chatbots

In this article we arrest the concept of ‘power-seeking’ away from apocalyptic discourses about AI's future risks to humanity. Following Latour, we suggest that while non-human actors may ‘authorize, allow, afford, encourage…[etc.]’, they can also seek power . We explain how power-seeking as a potential non-human ‘program of action’– specifically, the pursuit of increasing abilities, or authority or control over other actors – facilitates analysis of networks that enable or curb the development of technologies founded on future imaginaries. To illustrate the potential utility of power-seeking as an agency of non-human actors in the new materialist theoretical repertoire, we apply it to AI large language models, focusing on the banal reality of today's chatbots. Overall, we advance ‘power-seeking’ as a conceptual tool to analyse human–non-human dynamics, power and agency, and how associations produce outcomes that are more or less harmful or beneficial to collectives.