Digital Culture & Society - Vol. 12, Issue 1/2026 - Critical AI: Rethinking Intelligence, Bias, and Control

Artificial Intelligence is not only a technological innovation, but a cultural practice shaped by social, historical, and political contexts. AI systems reflect human values and power relations, reinforcing cultural norms and ideologies. Through algorithmic monitoring and automated decision-making, they operate as mechanisms of social control – embedding bias, sustaining dominance, and creating new visibilities. This issue examines how AI-mediated surveillance reshapes knowledge, accountability, and marginalization within digital societies, focusing on platform capitalism, the economic precarity and exploitation of clickworkers in the Global South, biometric control, and the commodification of social behavior.