On the sui generis value capture of new digital technologies: The case of AI

Much of the academic interest surrounding the emergence of new digital technologies has focused on forwarding the engineering literature, concentrating on the potential opportunities (economic, innovation, etc.) and harms (ethics, climate, etc.), with less focus on the foundational and theoretical shifts brought about by these technologies (e.g., what are “digital things”? What is the ontological nature and state of phenomena produced by and expressed in terms of digital products? Are there distinctions between the traditional conceptions of digital and non-digital technologies?. We investigate the question of what value is being expressed by an algorithm, which we conceptualize in terms of a digital asset, defining a digital asset as a valued digital thing that is derived from a particular digital technology (in this case, an algorithmic system). Our main takeaway is to invite the reader to consider artificial intelligence as a representation of the capture of value sui generis and that this may be a step change in the capture of value vis à vis the emergence of digital technologies.