In the 400 years since his death, William Shakespeare’s work has been used as a lens through which to interpret countless developments he could never have anticipated – from modern psychology and political theory to colonialism and climate change. His writing possesses an uncanny ability to illuminate nearly every facet of the human condition.
Yet, as a decolonial scholar and an AI researcher, we believe that Shakespeare’s plays are now beginning to illuminate something beyond that as well – the emergent forms of artificial intelligence that increasingly shape and challenge our understanding of what it means to think, act and be.
AI tools have rapidly become part of many people’s everyday lives. Yet relatively few probably consider the physical infrastructure that makes these systems possible. Each prompt we send is processed in distant data centres: vast facilities that generate responses by predicting the most likely sequence of words based on patterns learned from enormous datasets.
This dynamic of distant, unseen control recalls Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play that offers a useful means of understanding how power operates through hidden infrastructures.
This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.
AI data centres are energy and resource intensive, often located far from the users they serve. In some cases, they are built in rural or marginalised regions where land and resources are more easily secured. For example, in the United States, a proposed bill, NCA 25-077, would establish the Mvskoke Technology and Innovation Park in eastern Oklahoma. This proposal sparked debate within the Mvskoke Nation, particularly around water usage and long-term trade-offs, which ultimately led to it being voted down.
Mvskoke Nation citizen Jordan Harmon and her friend Mackenzie Roberts, two prominent voices in the debate, pointed to these data centres’ “ravenous consumption of data and physical resources” and AI being used to “surveil and police people”. They consider this as “part of the legacy of colonialism and imperialism”. AI data centres are extractive endeavours, they argued, impinging on other aspects of a community’s life, such as water supply and land sovereignty.
The Tempest offers a stark warning of what happens if such endeavours are not reined in.
Prospero’s island and the politics of AI infrastructure
The play tells the story of Prospero, the exiled duke of Milan. He seizes control of a remote island and its inhabitants, including a creature named Caliban and the spirit Ariel. While the play ends with reconciliation and Prospero’s return to Milan, it has long been read by postcolonial scholars as an allegory of colonisation. Caliban’s prior claim to the island, “which thou tak’st from me”, resonates with contemporary struggles over land and resources.
Yet the parallels go further when considering how Prospero exercises power. His authority depends not only on physical domination but on his command of sorcery and manipulation. Both Ariel and Caliban are compelled to serve him – Ariel through enchantment, Caliban through coercion and emotional abuse.
In this sense, Prospero’s magic mirrors the logic of modern AI systems, which extracts labour to transform human knowledge and creativity into outputs that appear detached from the people and environments that make them possible.
Prospero’s conjuring of a storm at the start of the play is equally revealing. The tempest is a spectacle of control, designed to disorient and reorder the world to Prospero’s advantage. Today’s AI expansion produces its own kind of storm: not only in the environmental strain of data centres, but also in the disruption of labour markets, as automation threatens certain forms of work while concentrating power in the hands of a few corporations. Like Prospero’s magic, these transformations obscure the decisions and interests that drive them.
In the final act of The Tempest, Prospero relinquishes his magical power only after it has enabled him to recover his dukedom, orchestrate reconciliation, and secure dynastic stability, implying that his renunciation is prompted less by ethical transformation than by the completion of his political objectives.
The play largely centres on Prospero’s authority, in which power was his to give, instead of offering recognition of the native inhabitants as agents capable of self-governance. A similar dynamic is echoed in the discourse surrounding AI, where corporations are unlikely to surrender control unless it becomes advantageous to do so.
The Mvskoke Nation has demonstrated that it is not futile for Indigenous citizens to assert their sovereignty and maintain stewardship of their lands by exerting pressure that makes the continued development of data centres more costly. This comparison highlights that, unlike the idealised resolution of the play, real-world change is rarely driven by the goodwill of those in power. Instead, it often depends on the efforts of communities to make continued control less advantageous and to demand accountability
From Caliban to contemporary struggles
Postcolonial scholars have often compared the relationship between Caliban and Prospero to that between colonised and coloniser. This can be seen in novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen’s writing, where the colonised are called the “descendants of Caliban”. Jamaican-born poet Safiya Sinclair’s literary manifesto articulates similar sentiments where she compares herself to Caliban.
Nguyen and Sinclair are among the thinkers and authors concerned with the impact of colonisation and the role of language in shaping colonial power. Colonisation can take many forms – the rise of data centres on lands that do not belong to multinational corporations is just one of them.
Rather than treating AI infrastructure as inevitable, the debate within the Mvskoke Nation is a reminder that its development is a matter of choice. If data centres are to exist on Indigenous lands, they must not replicate extractive models that prioritise corporate gain over community wellbeing.
Caliban’s experience of loss and coercion under Prospero’s control need not be the template of the historical or future trajectories of Indigenous nations such as the Mvskoke Nation. As communities assert control over their digital futures, they challenge us to rethink who AI is for and who it benefits.
Beyond the canon
As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Xin Ying Lim and Xin Chen Cai’s suggestion:
A highly engaging contemporary play that explores themes of power, justice, identity and resistance is Off the Rails by Randy Reinholz. Set in 1880s Nebraska, the play follows Indigenous American characters navigating a world shaped by colonial control and cultural suppression.
Reinholz examines how institutions and authority figures can restrict individual freedom while also highlighting the resilience of communities facing oppression. The play combines humour, romance, music and social commentary to create an accessible yet thought-provoking exploration of cultural survival and self-determination.
Rather than presenting history as a distant subject, Off the Rails brings the experiences of Indigenous people to life through vivid characters and dramatic storytelling. Its focus on challenging injustice and preserving identity makes it a powerful and relevant work for modern audiences, offering fresh perspectives on social inequality and the lasting effects of colonialism.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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