Ifeoma Ajunwa (Emory U Law) has posted “A.I. and Captured Capital” (134 Yale L. J. Forum (2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Increasingly, automated processes—under the catch-all term “artificial intelligence” (AI)—serve as “mechanical managers” in the workplace. They may manifest as productivity applications to spur workers to work faster or as deputized surveillants who monitor workers’ every move. Moving beyond surveillance capitalism, this Essay argues that, absent legal intervention, we are on a path toward a scientific approach to management that prioritizes efficiency and deploys AI technologies to maximize output through the collection and exploitation of worker’s captured capital. That is, the more benevolent tenets of scientific management, such as encouraging productivity or achieving mutual prosperity for employers and workers , no longer represent paramount goals for firms. Rather, emboldened by new AI capabilities, firms have set out to quantify or reduce all elements of workers’ experience to data. This data is valuable capital that (1) holds exchange value and (2) drives the automation of workplaces and the displacement of workers.
The contributions of this Essay are threefold. First, this Essay names and describes the sociolegal phenomenon of “captured capital”—that is, the coercive collection and use of worker data to facilitate workplace automation and ultimately worker displacement. Second, this Essay situates this phenomenon within an AI arms race in the workplace and analyzes it through the lens of law and political economy. Specifically, the Essay argues that the AI arms race has spurred the unchecked development and deployment of AI technologies and that a laissez-faire approach to globalization has encouraged the growth of a borderless labor market without adequate international labor protections, leaving workers vulnerable. Third, the Essay sets forth three potential legal avenues for redress: (1) treating the data gathered from workers as stake capital in the automation of their workplaces such that a portion of the gains from automation is rightfully returned to the worker; (2) creating a licensing regime for workers to license their data freely to firms; and (3) requiring firms that use workers’ data as part of their automation process to pay into a fund that will finance a guaranteed income. Finally, the Essay notes a role for the International Labor Organization to play in protecting workers in the AI revolution.