The Inequality Regime of AI

Reviews / Votes

"In The Inequality Regime of AI, Ragnedda and Ruiu provide much-needed foundational sociological grammar for our algorithmic era. Moving the field far beyond the 'digital divide', they generate a fresh foundational concept: the insidious 'AI stratification spiral' through which historical inequalities are mathematically naturalized and automated. By conceptualizing AI as a regime that monopolizes the 'means of cognition,' Ragnedda and Ruiu reveal how the 'allocative turn' in social institutions functions as a new form of symbolic violence. As such their work does not merely treat AI technologies; rather it is a critical mapping of how predictive power reorganizes the social order, making it an essential text for any scholar of social stratification and global power."

-- Laura Robinson, Professor of Sociology, Santa Clara University, USA

"This is a timely intervention that frames AI not as a neutral tool marred by occasional bias, but as a structuring force in a new Inequality Regime. By shifting the focus from participation gaps to asymmetries in prediction, the book argues that power now lies with those who control the means of cognition. Concepts such as the Predictive Cage, digital feudalism, and computational metabolism offer a rigorous vocabulary for understanding how automated systems stabilize hierarchy while extracting both social and planetary resources. The authors do not stop at critique: their call for redistributive infrastructures and an algorithmic commons is concrete, ambitious, but mostly necessary. This is an important contribution that supports shaping debates across technology, politics, and society."

-- Alexander van Deursen, Professor of Digital Inequality and Director of the Centre for Digital Inclusion, University of Twente, the Netherlands