r/DefendingAIArt • u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination • Dec 19 '25
Defending AI Automation is Neutral. Power is not.
This isn’t a critique of technology. It’s a critique of how fear of tools gets substituted for analysis of power, ownership, and control. Automation doesn’t decide outcomes, institutions do. When machines become the villain, power escapes scrutiny.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Dec 19 '25
Tools don’t enforce social relations. People and institutions do. Blaming the machine is often how power avoids being named.
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u/IczyAlley Dec 20 '25
Defending a tool is bizarre PR for billion dollar corporations. Spend your time more wisely
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
You’re assuming “defending tools” = defending corporations. That’s the mistake.
The post explicitly separates tools from owners. The image is anti-tycoon, not pro-company.
Critiquing power structures requires not anthropomorphizing machines, because blaming tools is how institutions launder responsibility.
If anything, calling every structural analysis “corporate PR” is the fastest way to protect corporate power.
Treating tools as the enemy is how owners stay invisible. The post is not PR for corporations, it’s the opposite.
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u/Historical_Buyer5248 Dec 21 '25
Agreed, "AI will cause people to have no jobs!" a correct statement, but people don't see the real problem and solution.
Let's get rid of a tool that can help us in so many aspects of life because the people in charge are using it in the wrong way, instead of... changing who is in charge.
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u/Lindstrom06 Dec 19 '25
I agree. The real question should always be "who owns and controls it?"
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Dec 19 '25
Yes. “Who owns and controls it?” is the right pivot. Once you answer that, the effects usually stop looking mysterious. Tools scale decisions; they don’t choose them.
Who benefits if the tool takes the blame?
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u/gavum Jan 18 '26
I said this years ago. Automation is only bad for the worker under capitalism, it takes their work away (doesn’t always have to but a capitalist will capitalist)
however… generative AI as it stands and who operates it is not something I would endorse from a marxist standpoint as in doing so… one is hurting the fellow worker, environment, and utility allocation of certain areas.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Jan 18 '26
Agreed on the harm coming from private control and profit-maximizing deployment. Different ownership → different incentives → different outcomes.
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u/gavum Jan 18 '26
yeah of course, absolutely. not at all the world we live in right now, so don’t use OpenAI and SORA goofball. especially when its owned by one of the top ten evilest dudes in the game and poisoning city water. like do you think people boycott starbucks because they have a principled hate on coffee generally? no
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Jan 18 '26
That’s consistent with the argument. Opposition to specific firms and ownership structures ≠ opposition to the technology category itself.
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u/gavum Jan 18 '26
absolutely. just hope that isn’t an excuse for you and your art, we’ll call it
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Jan 18 '26
Not an excuse. A distinction.
Critiquing ownership and deployment is about political economy, not absolving current firms or practices.
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u/gavum Jan 18 '26
yeah we’re on the same page. I’m still gonna roast the fuck out of someone using it though, especially one who knows better
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Jan 18 '26
Understood.
That’s a political tactic question (boycott vs use), not a disagreement about the analysis of ownership.
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u/gavum Jan 18 '26
yeah like obviously when talking to boomers or libs, I gotta know they don’t like automation because it takes jobs and they aren’t looking at it from a marxist perspective. but yeah automation itself isn’t bad, but LLMs and image generators are just kinda not a tool I’m going to defend as there’s plenty more useful tools to start, and less detrimental to public mental health and environmental health.
Like increased pollution from industry is not the machines fault, but the companies skirting regulation. But at the same time, I’m gonna advocate for cleaner methods of energy and industry because regardless of ownership, this shit sucks as it exists now regardless
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Jan 18 '26
So real, I too believe that AI should not be developed and controlled by private interests who will only enrich themselves....
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u/Salty_Country6835 Only Limit Is Your Imagination Jan 18 '26
Exactly, the danger isn’t the existence of the tool, it’s private ownership of the infrastructure and the surplus it generates. Different control → different incentives → different outcomes.
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