AI-Mediated Academic Labour and the Political Economy of Liberation: From Peer Review to Post-Labour Society

Abstract

This paper uses the rapid automation of academic work as an empirical entry point for reconsidering labour and liberation under advanced artificial intelligence. Recent systems can mediate literature processing, idea generation, experimentation, manuscript writing, and peer review, while conferences are beginning to govern AI-generated evaluation and AI-mediated authorship at institutional scale. The paper distinguishes knowledge-generative activity from the circulatory, evaluative, administrative, and coordinative labour required to reproduce scholarly systems. It then examines whether automation can release scholars from compulsory functional roles while preserving self-directed participation in knowledge generation. Academic work is treated as a compact political economy in which production, verification, credit, scarce attention, resources, and institutional recognition interact. The resulting analysis extends beyond academia toward a broader post-labour question: liberation may concern the reorganization of compulsory functionalization and generative agency as much as the quantitative reduction of work.