worse still — we aren’t even talking about socialization. What Sanders is talking about is (partial) nationalization. The question we are debating is not “Should the workers take over?” but “Should the government?” It may have escaped the notice of those in that debate, but the current government is not particularly sympathetic to socialist interests. That Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have both “called for the nationalization of AI firms” is presented by Guastella as a positive thing, as transcending the partisan divide. We think it represents a grave strategic error.
This is particularly crucial precisely because AI is attacking many of the most privileged workers, bringing the logic of mass production to realms that have so far been relatively protected from it. Take, for example, therapists. It’s easy to picture the capitalist AI future for mass-produced therapy: it’s not the rosy picture of full automation, in which a chatbot can provide competent therapy for the masses. The future in which we all have dozens of “agents” working on our behalf (or whatever the current sales pitch may be) will look bleak — like a single therapist overseeing window after window of AI chat interfaces. Client after client is talking to a language model, the trained professional is there to oversee the chats — scanning them for dangers and possible liabilities. The provided care will be of dubious quality — but boy, will it be cheap.
(still guild-related thought pattern (is it proudhonism or whatever it’s called?), but at least approaching humane thought rather than previous drivel (linked at the top of the article)
no mentions of ai weapons systems, of course.
Like no one talks about what if we just don’t want it? We can refuse tech, it’s not inevitable, we don’t want a machine that alienates us from our labour and creates an isolated society of consumers.
Your comment perfectly illustrates a common mistake among leftists to conflate AI as a technology with capitalists using it against our interests as workers.
As it stands AI is usually bad news, but that’s because we live under a capitalist system where the bourgeoisie will use any technological breakthrough to undermine us. This says infinitely more about that economic arrangement than the technology itself which can be used for a myriad of ends.
It’s all fine to say that the technology is value neutral in principle, but it simply isn’t how it manifests today. The technology can only be detrimental under capitalism, it is going to be used for genocide wherever it hasn’t already begun and thus far the capitalists are not only the sole faction building them but are also the only ones with the resources to commit to “frontier” LLMs. There’s just not enough momentum from our side to turn that around from manifesting a fascist destiny with these things, the destruction of all the capital left to the working class accelerates with every land purchase these red-tech theoretics enable.
Though I’m not arguing for capitalism under any circumstances it’s simply a gross oversimplification to say AI can’t and doesn’t have any positive value under capitalism. AI being used for cancer research is not detrimental to our interests.
It’s also not like we can prevent AI from developing anyway if we don’t yet own the means of production. That’s what these matters boil down to every time. If we disavow any development under capitalism that could be used against us then we’re little more than conservative reactionaries fighting a battle that’s already lost.
Instead any new development ought to be used as momentum to argue for and organize towards the collective self-determination of production.
AI being used for cancer research is detrimental to our interests so long as it’s used to justify every violation this tech will be used for, just like every sob story used to justify an tyrannical development (it’ll catchremoveds, it’ll protect kids etc) especially when you factor that the cure for cancer will only be used to treat the ones exterminating everyone else. Don’t pretend human intelligence isn’t enough to make that kind of progress without help. Technology is not inherently neutral, its providence is important. The only reason guns and weapons of mass destruction are useful is because someone else built them. That’s nothing. These things are by their own nature or the nature of what it took to bring them into the world biased towards being bad. And like with any new technology it’s no good contriving a niche context where they might be useful after all just so you can plunge ahead recklessly like an accelerationist that thinks building the singularity is more important to themselves than clean water. In the end this tech is more odious than what a communist should want to make, you need to to ask who’s labor it is when you use something by open-ai or anthropic. There’s a difference between y’know critical support for deepseek and trying to stifle liberal anti-ai sentiment by arguing from toy model first principles like a conservative doing a “rational debate”.
Okay, so no AI then until further notice except that requires organizing towards collective control of the means of production which would solve AI being used against us by a tiny minority of imperialists anyway.
Yes? We’re powerless to actually dictate the uses presented to us, just our personal participation and the expenditure of our personal labour. For the proletariat to support LLMs, or to not support LLMs, is largely irrelevant - except that the former weakens your stance against those who actually control it, and the capitalists want your support.
No AI. No human genetic augmentation. No immortality. No neural control brain interfaces. Even when they promise this time they’ll show mercy, this time surely the technology is too good and noble to scrape the marrow from our bones, that one day it’ll be ours, that we don’t want to be left behind the wave of the future.
Revolutionary defeatism applies to Progress, most especially that of the tools of control. If there was an actual arms race, sure, it’d be appropriate to have a technical appreciation for the potential of the technology… were we living in the nation fighting for human liberation.
Perhaps that is China, but I do not live in China.
If we’re powerless to dictate the terms of technological development under capitalism it’s even more nonsensical to think we can simply reject AI out of existence, which is what you seem to be arguing while completely ignoring my argument that we ought to organize towards collective control of said technology which would solve the concerns around AI being used against our interests.
Not really, I’m afraid. You shouldn’t stop technological development under the premise of a world where capitalism exists in your socialist state, because otherwise other states developing this technology will leave you behind. Centralized democratic control over technology is much better than the refusal to develop it.
If you make a socialist state, capitalists in other states larger and wealthier than yours will suspect that you have invested in mind-burning technology and name their headaches after you. That’s how much they’ll be leaving you behind.
What if the democratic will, in a world without capitalism, insists on not developing the technology regardless?
That’s a different story, yeah, assuming we live in an internationally socialist disarmed world
I hope one day we’ll get to find out!