City Research Online

Abstract

Scholars remain divided on AI’s implications for the future of work, with debate centred on what AI can do to jobs rather than on the economic regime shaping how it is deployed and who appropriates its returns. This article argues that AI’s impact on university-educated labour cannot be understood through technological capability alone, but requires analysing the rentier dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Drawing on political economy and sociology, it develops a framework for understanding AI as a productive rentier asset, one whose returns derive from constructed scarcity and access control rather than commodity exchange. Labour markets for university-educated workers are where the explanatory limits of human capital theory are most consequentially exposed. Credential devaluation, declining returns to educational investment, and oligopolistic capture of productivity gains are intelligible as outcomes of AI-driven assetisation. Addressing AI’s labour market effects requires engaging with mechanisms of ownership and access control, not technological capability alone.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.
Publisher Keywords:	artificial intelligence, university-educated labour, rentier capitalism, political economy, education
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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