Do Humans and Machines Dream of Resistance? Oblique Generativity, Datapolitics and Power Relations after Generative AI

The aim of this article is to analyze the political implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the notions of power and resistance as elaborated by Michel Foucault. To this end, I begin with a problematization of the Foucauldian distinction between capacity and power, arguing that the exclusion of the non-human from power relations is itself a power operation. I then examine machinic resistance through a strategic reading of Heidegger’s analysis of tool unavailability, and I argue that generative AI exhibits a fourth modality of resistance that I call “oblique generativity”: the irreducible generation of outputs exceeding what is instrumentally demanded. On this basis, I propose the concept of “datapolitics” to designate the contemporary form of Power that treats its subjects (both human and generative AI) as programmable information with the aim of probabilistically anticipating their field of possible actions. Finally, I argue for the possibility of joint resistance between humans and machines against datapolitics, and I identify, in a preliminary way, further forms of machinic agency that do not coincide with oblique generativity.