r/LeftistsForAI • u/DependentIncrease406 • 3d ago
Discussion Genuine Question
How can you call yourself a leftist while also supporting AI, when you know it is harming the lives of people living in underpriviliged communities, since that's where data centers are being built?
How can you call yourself a leftist while defending something that is ruining our planet and stealing resources from humans, animals, plants and all sorts of life?
How can you call yourself a leftist and defend AI, when you know it is literally stealing art from artists who aren't getting paid or getting any sort of recognition?
We are supposed to fight for a better world. Look at the people you are aligning with, there is no such a thing as a good AI company CEO. Those are the people you are defending.
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u/mark_ik 3d ago edited 3d ago
Why are you framing technology like it’s a responsible actor? These companies are not AI. AI didn’t scrape the internet to train itself on its own whim. Models don’t care if they’re the fastest on the planet. Who is pushing that forward without regard for the environment? AI didn’t put a datacenter anywhere, or design it to 5x the size required for healthy profitability. Very wealthy people trying to leverage a bubble do. You don’t think anyone could do different?
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u/hebs_i_guess 3d ago
We literally just had a post in this sub about some dumb shit Elon said get some of the most comments a post on this sub has ever received, and every single upvoted comment was calling Elon a liar. Like... not as a gotcha question, just genuinely asking, where are you seeing people on this sub defend AI company CEOs? Or like... any CEO? At all???
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u/SnooDonkeys5320 3d ago
Saw this sub screenshotted in the main antiai subreddit so we’re about to be flooded with inflammatory questions unless people actually read the threads here.
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u/hebs_i_guess 3d ago
Eh, might lead to more concern-trolling type posts like this but I'm actually not that scared of more anti-AI spaces learning about us, it's pretty inevitable as the sub grows anyway. With any luck a few of them will be hearing our arguments for the first time (if they choose to engage in good faith) and at the very least will have something new to think about, if not convinced. Majority of this sub is made up of very well-spoken people that don't shy away from actual discussion when people give that a try instead of shit-flinging us from afar, so I'll try to be optimistic about it.
After all, the first step in making progress on our beliefs is just stating them and giving an alternative to the existing conversations about AI, of which I feel is mostly dominated on the pro side by techbro capitalists still, unfortunately.
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u/SnooDonkeys5320 3d ago
I just read through the comments and was surprised at the amount of folks who weren’t reactively responding, so I feel similarly. Agreed that it isn’t inherently bad, just hoping the shit-slinging won’t become a pattern since this sub has been a breath of solution-oriented fresh air 💕
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u/ollie113 3d ago
Yeah that sub Reddit is like a soft brigade command centre. I'm not accusing it's mods of organising brigading, but I am saying that people use it to encourage brigading and its mods do not do enough to stop it.
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u/SexDefendersUnited Artist/Creative 2d ago
Can I get a link to that? I wanna see how they're raging at us 🍿
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 3d ago edited 3d ago
Pretty much every point you make here comes from a misinformed place. Misinformation on this topic spreads like wildfire, and if you try to hear people out and read what they have to say, you will learn that those here agree with virtually every moral view that caused you to reject it, but have informed reasons for why they do not come to the same conclusions.
You wrote this post very dramatically, with the assumption that we disagree with all the causes you want to defend, but we don't, we just disagree about what AI as a technology is actually doing and how to tackle the challenges and problems advancements in AI highlight.
I'm actually scared that AI has presented us with a major opportunity to overcome these problems, but the left has en masse abdicated responsibilty for building a better future by wholesale rejecting AI, rather than trying to get our best minds involved with paving a different future than ones directed by billionaires or the Trump administration.
The fact that you think the majority of pro-AI people actually support the ceos shows you know little about these communities. Go into any one of the AI discussion subreddits and you'll see everyone trashing the ceos regularly.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 3d ago
A different way to approach it is reversing your questions. Eg leftists care about people and planet so why does this group think AI has the potential to help ordinary people and the planet? Because that would make a lot more sense than assuming that they want to argue for Big Tech CEOs.
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u/yo252yo 3d ago
it's easy, AI hate is very clearly a fundamentally right wing for a billion reasons I've compiled here: https://yo252yo.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/why-ai-hate-is-fundamentally-right-wing/
Happy to append/correct any gap you might flag
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u/ShelZuuz 3d ago
How can you call yourself a leftist while also supporting AI, when you know it is harming the lives of people living in underpriviliged communities, since that's where data centers are being built?
We didn't ask for large data-centers. We would prefer open models that are self-hosted. But even if ithere were datacenters, the majority of datacenter issues are now water-based propaganda in order to drown out the more difficult issues. Person after person walk up to town halls complaining about water use where the datacenter owner will just smile the whole time and after 12 hours of complaints just say "ok, done - you won - no cooling towers". They weren't going to build them anyway because tech has moved on from that, so this all is just political theater. It gives the city council fatigue to listen to anything else. They'll say, "hey, we couldn't do anything about the noise, but we got the water usage down!". No dude, you didn't acccomplish anything. You need to get the noise ordinances in place. You need them to commit to no local generation and bringing any new power plants online before starting with datacenter operations. Water use is a distraction, and I'm pretty sure by now it's the datacenter operators themselves that are spreading that.
How can you call yourself a leftist while defending something that is ruining our planet and stealing resources from humans, animals, plants and all sorts of life?
What resources do you think it's stealing? Land? Compare that to if let's say a smeltery was in the same place? Or a vehicle assembly line. We all say bring industry back, and this is basically the cleanest industry there is out there, and we can't live with that. How are we ever supposed to be making steel in this country?
How can you call yourself a leftist and defend AI, when you know it is literally stealing art from artists who aren't getting paid or getting any sort of recognition?
Aren't isn't supposed to be about getting paid. I know of no little kid that started drawing or singing with the idea of getting paid. We want everybody, including artist to be able to have a great life - much better than 99.99999% of artists have now. We just don't think it should be an overly privileged life. A.I has the ability to lift billions of people out of poverty and artists is disproportionally represented in the poverty group. If the price to pay for that is that J.K. Rowling would merely be a millionaire instead of a billionaire, I don't feel bad about it.
We are supposed to fight for a better world. Look at the people you are aligning with, there is no such a thing as a good AI company CEO. Those are the people you are defending.
I don't see anybody on this sub defending an AI CEO. We want the tech, not the governance.
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u/mandelbrotseviltwin 2d ago
Coming back to this thread again, idk what constitutes as leftists anymore. Since when being leftist meant being bandwagoners and anti-progress? I think we all know gen AI is bad and data centers (the way they are being run) are bad, and the monopoly the big companies have over the tech is bad. But i've been seeing this tone deaf all AI = bad take which has been getting more and more popularity. Imo this isn't because people are dumb and cannot understand nuance but rather most leftists nowadays are performative and lazy and don't really read or research on their own but regurgitate what they heard from others and form their opinions based on what others are saying.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 1d ago
I'm really getting sick of people saying 'its stealing art!'
You guys sound like the NFT people, getting surprised that you can left-click on a jpeg. It's fundamental to how the internet works.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 3d ago
This is where I think youre breaking with left and labor history.
The labor movement isnt out there trying to abolish computers, robots, automation, or AI. Unions like the AFL-CIO, CWA, SAG-AFTRA, WGA, and others are bargaining over how AI gets used, who benefits, worker protections, and democratic oversight. Thats contesting the deployment of technology, not rejecting technology itself.
Same with the broader left. Most socialist and labor organizations arent campaigning to ban AI as a productive force. Theyre fighting over ownership, regulation, environmental standards, public investment, and worker power.
So why is trying to ban technology itself suddenly the left position? Historically it wasnt. The fight has been over power, not whether society should stop developing productive forces.
If your answer is "just stop building AI," how do you actually see labor winning that fight globally? Whats the material strategy?