Artificial Intelligence, Global Inequality, and the Colonial Machinery of Capital

Copilot in the Shadow of Empire

by Sammy Attoh / December 30th, 2025

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a universal breakthrough — a tool that will democratize knowledge, expand opportunity, and usher in a new era of human progress. But AI does not emerge in a vacuum. It is built inside a global order shaped by conquest, extraction, and the long shadow of empire. The world into which Copilot is deployed is not neutral terrain; it is a landscape carved by centuries of unequal development.

Copilot becomes not only a technological assistant, but a mirror — revealing the deep inequalities that structure our world. AI does not transcend inequality. AI exposes it.

The child, the circuit, and the colonial wound

Imagine two children born in the same century, under the same sky.

One grows up in an African village where electricity flickers or fails, where nightfall is not a choice but a condition, and where the promises of the “digital age” arrive as distant echoes. The other grows up in a Western city, surrounded by devices, broadband, and an entire ecosystem of artificial intelligence — including Copilot — ready to support learning, creativity, and opportunity.

Between these two children stands a powerful technology. But Copilot does not bridge the divide. It reveals it.

The African child is not “behind.” The African child has been pushed behind — by centuries of colonial plunder, resource theft, structural adjustment, and debt regimes that weakened the very infrastructures AI requires. These are not historical footnotes; they are living conditions. They shape who has access to electricity, who has access to bandwidth, and who is structurally excluded from the digital world.  AI does not possess intention, but it operates inside human systems of intention. It does not decide where electricity flows, which languages dominate, or whose data becomes valuable. It simply amplifies the conditions into which it is placed.

The Western child is not “ahead.” The Western child has been placed ahead — by a global system designed to concentrate wealth, bandwidth, and possibility. The devices on the Western child’s desk are built from minerals mined in the Global South. The broadband that powers their learning is funded by economies that benefited from centuries of extraction. The AI tools they use are trained on data produced overwhelmingly in the Global North.

This is not a digital divide. This is a colonial divide — modernized, electrified, and automated.

Capitalism’s invisible hand on the keyboard

AI is often described as neutral or universal. But neutrality is impossible in a world organized by profit. Every layer of AI — from the minerals in its hardware to the languages in its training data — is shaped by global capitalism.

1. AI depends on unequal infrastructure

AI requires:

• electricity
• broadband
• data centers
• rare minerals
• global supply chains
• linguistic dominance

These are not evenly distributed. They follow the same patterns of extraction and accumulation that have defined global capitalism for centuries. The cobalt that powers batteries is mined in Congo. The servers that run AI models sit in wealthy nations. The languages prioritized by AI systems reflect colonial hierarchies, not global diversity.

2. AI reproduces global hierarchies

AI systems are trained on data produced by a world where:

• the Global South extracts
• the Global North accumulates
• the poor labor
• the rich automate
• the marginalized are surveilled
• the powerful are optimized

AI does not challenge this order. AI accelerates it.

The same forces that once controlled land, labor, and resources now control data, algorithms, and digital infrastructure. The logic has not changed — only the tools have.

3. AI extends the reach of empire

Where colonialism once used force, today it uses:

• patents
• platforms
• algorithms
• data monopolies

AI becomes a new frontier of control — shaping who learns, who works, who is visible, and who remains unseen. Nations without technological sovereignty become dependent on foreign platforms. Communities without connectivity become digitally invisible. Languages without representation become computationally extinct.

AI is not simply a tool. It is a political actor — one that reflects the priorities of those who own it.

Closing

And when Copilot reflects the world, it does not show a neutral landscape. It reveals a global order built on inequality, extraction, and the ruthless logic of profit — a world where technology advances while justice is deferred, and where innovation grows atop the suffering of those rendered invisible.

AI does not liberate the oppressed. AI exposes the oppression — the structural violence, the stolen futures, the engineered scarcity that capitalism normalizes and empire requires.

If AI is ever to serve humanity, then humanity must confront and dismantle the global capitalist order that shapes its reach, its purpose, and its beneficiaries. No algorithm can correct a world designed to concentrate power. No machine can democratize a system built on exclusion.

Until that transformation occurs, AI will remain what it is today: a brilliant light shining on a deeply unjust world — illuminating not our progress, but the wounds we refuse to heal

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Sammy Attoh is a Human Rights Coordinator, poet, and public writer. A member of The Riverside Church in New York City and The New York State Chaplains Group, he advocates for spiritual renewal and systemic justice. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from ancestral wisdom to explore the sacred ties between people, planet, and posterity. Read other articles by Sammy.