Yuk Hui, philosopher: ‘Tech companies want to exploit us and control us every second’ | Technology
Yuk Hui, philosopher: ‘Tech companies want to exploit us and control us every second’ | Technology
Publish Date: 2026-05-24 00:00:00
Source Domain: english.elpais.com
Hong Kong-born philosopher Yuk Hui was on track to become a computer engineer, but artificial intelligence led him to question consciousness, ethics, and our relationship with technology, ultimately prompting him to study philosophy in London.
In his book Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking, the professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam proposes technodiversity — an openness to traditions beyond the Western — as a response to an increasingly homogeneous world with ever-more-powerful corporations. In Post-Europe, Hui warns against nationalist and exclusionary ideologies, and in Kant Machine, he uses Kant’s ideas to explore the limits of AI.
We spoke with him during a visit to Madrid in late April, where he gave a talk at the Contemporánea Condeduque cultural center alongside journalist Marta Peirano. He doesn’t give his age, but when we ask whether he expected today’s rise of artificial intelligence back when he began studying philosophy, he jokes that he’s not that old: “There was already quite a bit of research on AI and neural networks.”
What has changed most, he says, is the business model behind the technology: “Most of these companies are, first and foremost, financial companies. Only after that are they tech companies.” This model, he argues, is less a threat to our jobs than a force reshaping entire economies and creating new kinds of work — like the rise of delivery‑app labor.
Question. This kind of work is worse for workers.
Answer. Not only that, but your life becomes tied to an algorithm. For example, the estimated delivery time within a three-kilometer [1.9-mile] radius decreases every year. The algorithm scores, manages the route, and penalizes. Many people thought that with these jobs, at least you’d have a flexible schedule. But that’s not true. I think the question of technology and work has less to do with unemployment and more to do with tech companies that want to exploit us and control us every second.
