GDI Lecture: The Rulers: Corporate Power in the age of AI and the cloud
| Dates: | 7 October 2026 |
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| Times: | 16:30 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | Global Development Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Alumni, Current University students |
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Why are Amazon, Microsoft and Google different from every other company and why should people and governments care? The Rulers explains how the power of these three giants lies in their dominance over today’s control technologies, from simple digital tools to frontier AI models, deployed within and beyond the tech sector. Combining more than 100 interviews at the world's largest firms with data on corporate venture capital, acquisitions, AI conference presentations and patents, Rikap shows that even the world’s largest corporations bow to these cloud giants. She presents a unique and empirically grounded theory of how corporate power is structured and exercised, and how those companies control AI value chains from their clouds.
Today’s top companies rely on digital technologies rented on cloud marketplaces to plan their production networks, replace and discipline workers and influence consumers. These firms extract value and capture knowledge from organisations within their own spheres of control by accepting a degree of subordination to cloud rulers. Control is not simply ceded to AI models, but to those who determine how the models are produced and sold. And these are, primarily, Amazon, Microsoft and Google through their clouds. State representatives change with elections. But Amazon, Microsoft and Google have become capitalism’s de facto unelected rulers and AI has only made them even more powerful.
Dr. Cecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor in Economics and the Head of Research at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Cecilia’s work analyses corporate power and how knowledge extractivism leads to intellectual monopolisation. Her most recent research focuses on artificial intelligence, the cloud, Big Tech dominance, AI-driven geopolitical tensions, digital sovereignty and how digital dependence constrains development. She has published four books on these topics. The award-winning book Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered, The Digital Innovation Race co-authored the book, and her two most recent books, “Teoría de la Dependencia Digital. Soberanía y Desarrollo en el Capitalismo del Siglo XXI” and “The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud” both published in 2026
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G32
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
