From the platform society to the AI society

Abstract

Generative AI is becoming embedded in infrastructures of knowledge, culture, and political authority, giving rise to an emerging AI society . This transformation did not arise ex nihilo : it is rooted in the platform society whose infrastructures, data, and political economies it reorganizes. The article traces this transition across three domains. Economically , platform-era monopoly mechanisms based on network effects are giving way to cognitive lock-in, enabling rent extraction through dependence on personalized systems. Epistemically , the predictive logic of platforms is being displaced by a generative one, in which theory is embedded in technological infrastructures and populations are simulated rather than sampled. Politically , platform-era struggles over visibility are shifting toward alignment politics: contests over what models can say, do, and refuse. Together, these shifts mark a qualitative change in mediation. We ask which insights from platform society scholarship should be carried forward, and which reconsidered, in ongoing critical research on generative AI.