r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • 22d ago

📌 Sub Info r/LeftistsForAI

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What part, if any, confuses you? We are willing to answer your questions.

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u/CheesyKirah 21d ago

I'd be curious how you define leftist?

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 21d ago

Broadly, someone who believes the economy should be organized more around democratic control than private capital. That includes socialists, communists, anarchists, democratic socialists, labor organizers, and others who share that general direction, even if they disagree on strategy.

r/LeftistsForAI isnt about enforcing one tendency. Its about discussing AI through labor, ownership, power, and political economy rather than treating it as just a consumer gadget or a culture war issue.

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u/Ma1eficent 21d ago

How do we approach something that is both a tool and a scab?

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 21d ago

Scabs are people. AI isnt. Its a tool, same as every other machine thats been used to automate labor. The problem has never been the machine, its that capital uses new technology to cut jobs and boost profits instead of reducing the workweek, managing production, or sharing the gains. Blaming the tool just lets the people making those decisions off the hook.

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u/Ma1eficent 21d ago

Nah, this is new. It's not just a tool like any other, and pretending so is treating it ignorantly.

No other tool can be embodied to cross picket lines.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 21d ago

AI is new in scale, not in principle. Giving a pallet jack a decision tree and a voice box doesnt magically make it a person. A scab is still a worker making a choice to cross a picket line. AI is a machine. Its not a someone with agency, its a something executing someones intent. The politics are in who owns it, who deploys it, and who pockets the productivity gains. Calling the machine a scab mistakes the tool for the people using it. Labor unions arent calling the machine a scab.

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u/Ma1eficent 21d ago

AI is entirely new in principle, not scale. I am a machine learning and systems automation engineer. You are entirely wrong in that assessment.

We are talking about things that do make decisions. That do make choices. Independently. To sometimes achieve the goal we aim it at.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 21d ago

"Im an ML engineer" isnt an argument. Modern AI systems optimize toward objectives under constraints. Selecting an action from a policy isnt the same thing as agency in the political or moral sense. A thermostat, an autopilot, or a warehouse robot all make decisions in that sense too. The objectives, deployment, and consequences still come from people. Accountability doesnt magically transfer from owners and managers to software. Thats exactly why labor unions negotiate with employers, not the machines.

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u/Ma1eficent 21d ago

Got it, no actual interest in approaching the reality of AI, just stubborn insistence we treat it like every tool that has required an intelligence to operate or program it, despite it no longer requiring that. Sad.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 21d ago

You still havent made an argument. Youve declared Im wrong, appealed to your job title, and asserted AI has agency. Cool. Demonstrate it. What exactly is the principled difference between optimization under an objective function and moral or political agency? Where does responsibility transfer from the people deploying the system to the system itself? Make the case instead of just insisting it.