The Inner World of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Elham Bahmanteymouri, Mohsen Mohammadzadeh, and Fabio Morreale, offers a critical and interdisciplinary exploration of how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the contemporary world. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars from planning, engineering, economics, philosophy, computer science, and media studies, the book examines the hidden infrastructures, political economies, and spatial imaginaries that underpin AI. It invites readers to look beyond technical narratives, uncovering how AI operates as both a transformative technology and a socio-political force.
Structured around three interconnected sections – Hidden and Subsumed Humans in Artificial Intelligence, Political Economies and Fantasies of AI, and AI, Urban Knowledge, and the Repressed Real – the volume explores how AI functions simultaneously as technology, ideology, and social relation. Contributors reveal how intelligent systems mediate labour, governance, and everyday life, exposing both the promises and contradictions of automation and digitalisation. The book also analyses AI’s entanglements with global urbanisation, environmental change, and shifting power relations across regions, including the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.
Offering a critical yet accessible perspective, The Inner World of Artificial Intelligence serves as an invaluable reference for academics, professionals, and policymakers interested in understanding AI’s technical, social, spatial, and ethical implications. It will appeal to readers in planning, economics, political science, engineering, and the social sciences who seek to navigate and shape the complex human–AI relationship in an age of accelerating technological transformation.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Table of Contents:
1 - Editorial Introduction. The Inner World of Artificial Intelligence Section 1 - Hidden and Subsumed Humans in Artificial Intelligence 2 - Human Subsumption in Training Datasets for Music Generation 3 - Authorship, Ownership, Authority, Validation and Creativity through AI 4 - Humanness in the context of Artificial Intelligence: Performative imaginaries in popular science narratives 5 - Reclaiming Agency! Algoactivism beyond resistance: appropriation and enactment in workplace AI systems Section 2 - Political Economies and Fantasies of AI 6 - AI in the Shadow of Big Other: Planning, Power, and the Locus of Control 7 - Land for AI: Data Center Real Estate Markets 8 Artificial Intelligence and Surveillance in the City: Implications for Urban Governance, Democracy and Power 9 - Can artificial intelligence facilitate faster development assessment? The case of an early adopter program 10 - AI and the Governance of Risk: Fantasies, Safety, and Situated Futures Section 3 - AI, Urban Knowledge, and the Repressed Real11 - UrbanArtificial Intelligence and Planning: Symbolic and Imaginary Representations and the RepressedReal 12 From Urban Surveillance to Urban Care13 - Tackling the Bias Problem at the Design Stage: Empirical Evidence from the CommuniCity project14 - Tackling the Bias Problem at the Design Stage: Empirical Evidence from the CommuniCity project, Kristina Khutsishivili15 - From Classical Models to Intelligent Systems: AI and Machine Learning in Transportation Planning
About the Author :
Elham Bahmanteymouri is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on urban critical theories, incomplete markets, housing and spatial inequality, and the implications of digital platforms and AI for planning and governance. Her recent book, Cities and Digital Platforms (Routledge, 2025), extends these inquiries. She also has extensive professional experience in urban and regional planning across public and private sectors.
Mohsen Mohammadzadeh is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning. He holds academic qualifications in Urban and Regional Planning, Urban Design, and Civil Engineering. His research includes, but is not limited to, planning theory and alternative approaches to planning practice, and examines how AI-enabled planning and urban digitalisation reshape governance, accountability, and equity in our cities. He also investigates societal and governmental readiness for disruptive mobility—including autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, and shared mobility platforms—across Australasia.
Fabio Morreale is a Staff Research Scientist at Sony AI in Barcelona. In his work, he combines his formal background in Computer Science with Philosophy to critically examine the functionality and philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the ethics and interpretability of generative AI. He previously served as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland.
Review :
“The Inner World of AI is an exceptional edited volume on the cultural and spatial dimensions of artificial intelligence. Bahmanteymouri, Mohammadzadeh and Morreale bring together a diverse set of scholars to examine how AI reshapes creativity, power, and human experience, a very important contribution to planning and design scholarship.”
- Dr Thomas W. Sanchez is a professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University.
“AI systems are made of far more than just software like neural networks and hardwarelike data centers. Inside every AI is a complex—and often hidden—web of human labour, social relations, psychic desires, and real estate. This book offers a wide-ranging investigation into the deeper interiority of AI.”
- Dr Jathan Sadowski is a senior lecturer at Department of Human Centred Computing, Monash University.
