AI and the capitalist space economy

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has fuelled concerns ranging from 'existential risk for humanity', framed as evolutionary competition with machines, to predictions of the 'end of work' via widespread substitution of humans by robots. Yet these extreme scenarios tend to operate at the intractable scale of 'humanity' and lack a geographically nuanced conceptual scaffolding. This article proposes such a scaffolding, starting with a conceptual dyad that is core to the geographical tradition: place and space. This perspective is intended to inform and situate debates about the role of AI in the construction and transformation of the capitalist space economy.