Instrumental Rationality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Re-reading Horkheimer and Habermas in the Constellation of Data Capitalism

Dewi Ayu Dyah Ningrum; Agung Winarno; Subagyo Subagyo

doi:10.55927/eajmr.v4i12.496

Authors

Dewi Ayu Dyah Ningrum Universitas Negeri Malang
Agung Winarno Universitas Negeri Malang
Subagyo Subagyo Universitas Negeri Malang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55927/eajmr.v4i12.496

Keywords:

Instrumental Rationality, Artificial Intelligence, Communicative Rationality, Data Capitalism

Abstract

This article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) within data capitalism intensifies instrumental rationality, as critiqued by Max Horkheimer, while simultaneously distorting communicative rationality in the Habermasian sense. Using a conceptual–analytical qualitative approach, it analyzes how algorithmic systems regulate social action by subordinating subjects to calculation, prediction, and efficiency. The study shows that the algorithmization of social life reduces human experience to units of datafication that can be predicted and modified, thereby deepening forms of technical domination. At the same time, algorithmically mediated digital public spheres are shaped more by platform commercial logics than by dialogic and deliberative norms, undermining conditions for democratic communication. By synthesizing Horkheimer and Habermas, the article proposes a conceptual framework for understanding contemporary forms of domination across technical and communicative domains and argues for the development of critical ethical–normative frameworks and the reconstruction of digital public spaces that support communication free from domination.

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