The Algorithmic Transformation of the Homo Economicus Neoliberalism, Artificial Intelligence, and the End of Anthropocentrism

Pdf
Published: Jun 7, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/dia.45780
Keywords:
Algorithmicity Governmentality Subjectivity Anthropocentrism Neoliberalism
Dionysis Asimiadis
Ph.D candidate, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Foteini Kagioglou
Lecturer, University of Western Macedonia, Greece
Abstract

This paper investigates the way in which the rise of Artificial Intelligence catalyzes a significant change in the figure of Homo Economicus, the key agent of the neoliberal order. Algorithmic reason, inscribed in machine learning, predictive platforms, and surveillance technologies, increasingly assumes a function of shaping, assessing, and governing subjects with a view to producing behaviors that can no longer be referred to a human reason and will. This argument argues that Artificial Intelligence is not only a tool of neoliberal politics but rather its technology of enforcement, mapping out a new frontier of reason, responsibility, and subjectivity. A critical analysis of the concepts of governmentality, predictive politics, and algorithmic normativity is used here to support the thesis of a new figure of the neoliberal order, one in which the algorithm has taken over the human subject as a new main reference, thus pointing towards an “end of anthropocentrism” concerning the constitution of economic and political subjectivity.This paper investigates the way in which the rise of Artificial Intelligence catalyzes a significant change in the figure of Homo Economicus, the key agent of the neoliberal order. Algorithmic reason, inscribed in machine learning, predictive platforms, and surveillance technologies, increasingly assumes a function of shaping, assessing, and governing subjects with a view to producing behaviors that can no longer be referred to a human reason and will. This argument argues that Artificial Intelligence is not only a tool of neoliberal politics but rather its technology of enforcement, mapping out a new frontier of reason, responsibility, and subjectivity. A critical analysis of the concepts of governmentality, predictive politics, and algorithmic normativity is used here to support the thesis of a new figure of the neoliberal order, one in which the algorithm has taken over the human subject as a new main reference, thus pointing towards an “end of anthropocentrism” concerning the constitution of economic and political subjectivity.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Aloisi, A., & De Stefano, V. (2022). Your boss is an algorithm: Artificial intelligence, platform work and labour. Bloomsbury.
Antoniadis, C. (2025). Knowing: The Zone of Interest from a philosophical point of view. Dia-noesis: A Journal of Philosophy, 17(1), 351–374.
Asimiadis, D. (2025). Discipline and subjectivity in religious education. Greek Journal of Religious Education, 8(1), 78–87.
Asimiadis, D. (2025). The political economy of neoliberalism in the global south. Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Review, 2(1), 39–53.
Asimiadis, D., & Kagioglou, F. (2025). The trauma of autonomy: Neoliberalism and the forms of the subject's exile. Dia-noesis: A Journal of Philosophy, 18(2), 63–82. https://doi.org/10.12681/dia.43443
Asimiadis, D., & Vavouras, E. (2026). Neoliberal spatialities of the self: Everyday architectures of optimization in digital and urban environments. Space and Culture, 0(0), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312261448027
Baradaran, M. (2024). The quiet coup: Neoliberalism and the looting of America. W. W. Norton & Company.
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Polity.
Benjamin, R. (2024). Imagination: A manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company.
Bonini, T., & Treré, E. (2024). Algorithms of resistance: The everyday fight against platform power. MIT Press.
Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press.
Bruff, I. (2014). The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism, 26(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.843250
Burrell, J., & Fourcade, M. (2021). The society of algorithms. Annual Review of Sociology, 47(1), 213–237.
Charitsis, V., & Laamanen, M. (2024). When digital capitalism takes (on) the neighbourhood: Data activism meets place-based collective action. Social Movement Studies, 23(3), 320–337.
Charitsis, V., Laamanen, M., & Lehtiniemi, T. (2024). Towards algorithmic Luddism: Class politics in data capitalism. Information, Communication & Society, 28(6), 971–998.
Cini, L. (2023). Resisting algorithmic control: Understanding the rise and variety of platform worker mobilisations. New Technology, Work and Employment, 38(1), 125–144.
Cohen, D. (2014). Homo Economicus: The (lost) prophet of modern times. Polity Press.
Colantone, I., & Stanig, P. (2018). The trade origins of economic nationalism: Import competition and voting behavior in Western Europe. American Journal of Political Science, 62(4), 936–953. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12358
Cornelissen, L. (2025). Neoliberalism and race. Stanford University Press.
De Cleen, B., & Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Distinctions and articulations: A discourse theoretical framework for the study of populism and nationalism. Javnost – The Public, 24(4), 301–319.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2017.1330083
Dhananjay, R. (2025). Public state and public policy: A study of neoliberalism and precarity. Indian Journal of Public Administration, 71(2), 232–248.
Draper, N. A., & Turow, J. (2019). The corporate cultivation of digital resignation. New Media & Society, 21(8), 1824–1839.
Galliot, A. (2020). The phenomenology of Homo Economicus. Sociological Theory, 38(1), 36–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120904981
Gerstle, G. (2022). The rise and fall of the neoliberal order: America and the world in the free market era. Oxford University Press.
Grahal, J. (2001). Globalised finance. New Left Review, 8, 23–47.
Grollios, V. (2016). Immaterial labour and social change at the heart of the crisis. Critical Sociology, 42(1), 177–181.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920515580178
Grollios, V. (2017). Negativity and democracy: Marxism and the critical theory tradition. Routledge.
Grollios, V. (2024). Illusion and fetishism in critical theory: A study of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists. Routledge.
Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Hautz, H., & Lipp, S. (2026). Algorithmic governmentality and student subjectivities: A critical examination of learning analytics in higher education. Learning, Media and Technology.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2026.2618762
Honig, B. (2024). Forensics and fabulation: Anti-shock politics and its Judaic inspirations. Political Theology, 24(2), 232–242.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2022.2110587
Kioupkiolis, A. (2010). Radicalizing democracy. Constellations, 17(1), 137–154. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2009.00561.x
Kioupkiolis, A. (2018). Movements post-hegemony: How contemporary collective action transforms hegemonic politics. Social Movement Studies, 17(1), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2017.1377604
Lafetty, G. (2016). Homo Economicus, moral sentiments, and the challenges of individualism. Review of Radical Political Economics, 49(1), 162–167.
Lialiouti, Z., & Bithymitris, G. (2017). A nation under attack: Perceptions of enmity and victimhood in the context of the Greek crisis. National Identities, 19(1), 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2015.1113240
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Belknap Press.
Rutar, T. (2023). What is neoliberalism really? A global analysis of its real-world consequences for development, inequality, and democracy. Social Science Information, 62(3), 295–322.
https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184231202950
Tsampazis, N. (2024). The natural gift in Rousseau's politics and educational theory. Dia-noesis: A Journal of Philosophy, 15, 139–152.
Tsakalotos, E. (2004). Homo Economicus, political economy and socialism. Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis, 68(2), 137–160.
Vavouras, E, (2019) The political and economic philosophy in Xenophon's Oeconomicus, Dia-noesis: A journal of philosophy, 6, 85-95.
Whyte, J. (2019). The morals of the market: Human rights and the rise of neoliberalism. Verso.
Yamagishi, T., Takagishi, H., Matsumoto, Y., & Kiyonari, T. (2014). In search of Homo economicus. Psychological Science, 25(9), 1699–1711.
Zelizer, V. (2011). Economic lives: How culture shapes the economy. Princeton University Press.