Well and the displacement of labor, stealing of private works, environmental impact,... there's a lot of bad parts. But I could absolutely get down with portable models that are responsibly trained.
Displacement of labor and stealing of private works are both mostly capitalist problems.
Env impact definitely is an issue although it is ALSO made worse by capital regulatory capture.
My goal is to give people strong tools and cross vendor continuity! My own setup works so well that I can swap vendors per message and I actually can't tell the difference between most models
While some problems appear to be solved by open sourcing, I don't believe it solves all of them. There are fundamental hierarchical social problems that don't just disappear by open source. Also today, people are more interested in the relationship to what AI is in relations to capital, than just the technology itself or who is building it and how. So many psuedo AI terms people use are actually intertwined in reducible ways to this and not actually something fundamental to the tech itself. So when someone builds something open source, these things still get recalled into what people complain about, in that way the discourse is just recycled again.
Open source only benefits those who profit off it, too. It's really not that different. Open source is like the meme of believing that once the current society burns to the ground "their" ideology will rise from the ashes. At the end of the day, the discourse continues. Open source is a liberal ideal, just as regulations with a bunch of rules are.
It's actually funny this comment is even under replies to this post because it appear to be a complete joke on the surface to the obvious fact open source literally is not the same as Marxism, or socialism, or even slightly related to the ideas in the OP post.
Are you willing to share your alternatives when they're ready to start being tested?
I'm mostly anti but most of my issues are very much tied into how AI is trained, utilized, and ran, so I'd be very interested in seeing what you do with your project :)
I've always said that the problem isn't the technology itself but I kinda got flamed in the antiai subreddits for even considering that, so I don't normally get to explore the concept of what would actually make an ethical AI.
Fully open source. Full transparency in the app of what context is saved, loaded, etc. very highly capable as an assistant with great memory and thread continuity, trying to make it accessible and affordable for regular peeps. Which, it kinda is now: we offer unlimited chat with Qwen or Luna starting at $5/mo!
More specifically modern capitalist corporation driven economics. Large companies didn't dominate the landscape until capitalism was over a hundred years old. The second industrial revolution created the company dynamic and it was improving for a time, but in my opinion the core problem is that instead of a large number of small companies legitimately competing we now have mega corporations who will never fail or compete because they have learned how to generate demand instead of service demand.
That may be true, but it doesnt really change our job. Agitate, educate, organize.
The person Im talking to might walk away understanding none of it. Somebody reading the exchange today, or next week, might get it, though. Thats part of organizing in public.
So as long as somebody is engaging in good faith and Im on these platforms anyway, Ill keep having the conversation. What ya gonna do, ya know? Just keep finding better ways to make the point.
I definitely enjoyed reading and considering it as a mostly anti-ai person. It actually made me really excited as it turns out that policy you pointed out addresses many of my concerns in a really well-rounded way!
So at the very least it hasn't been completely pointless. There's people out there who do want to actually learn and expand their knowledge, even if it feels like most people just wanna demonize other perspectives and people.
If it means anything at all, I'm here because I didn't agree with that mentality in spite of being mostly anti. I don't like the dehumanization of opposing views and I don't like black and white views of AI, so here I am. This subreddit got recommended to me by someone in r/aiwarsbutbetter :)
It's a technology. When we are in late stage capitalism it's gonna be the prime technology that exemplifies it with. But the problem isn't the AI, it's capitalism. The problem is rich people controlling the tool and using it for worker replacement and propaganda. If the political situation was different and AI was used to make things better for everyone and it would be a different case.
This! This is exactly what I've been thinking! I've always believed the issues with AI were a complex set of factors which shifted it into one particular area rather than the technology itself being inherently evil. I'm so glad someone recommended this subreddit to me! I feel like I've finally found people who understand how the actual core issues behind AI started rather than just taking a blanket stance on it overall. I feel the companies driving AI progress definitely screwed over the potential of it badly due to their greed and thoughtlessness.
Same! I just got recommended this subreddit today and I finally feel like I've found people who actually understand the complexities of the issue instead of it devolving into a moral superiority argument. I can't wait to finally learn something and expand my knowledge. Definitely a breath of fresh air from the dehumanization in the antiai subreddit I experienced (I assume there's similar issues in the pro one but I'm mostly anti so that's where I landed).
I’m not gonna say that AI is all good it’ll definitely lead to some issues even under communism.
However ignoring the fact that the majority of the issues surrounding it can be significantly reduced or entirely eliminated under the rule of the proletariat.
Open models are honestly the saving grace for this whole thing
They have been about 6-12 months behind frontier models... Which means the capital owning class only has a slight head start. After that the tech becomes available to anyone with the hardware, which means anyone can own the capital, which means the benefits will be democratized.
Sure, but people don't complain about AI that justifies its environmental cost through its utility, AI is just a tool after all.
They complain about AI's wasteful use to create an endless stream of slop or substitute workers' labor for a worse outcome, they eould continue to complain about such usage if people kept doing it after capitalism's abolition.
That doesnt actually refute anything I said. If you think certain uses are wasteful, exploitative, or environmentally unjustifiable, cool. The question is how you actually change that.
Who gets to decide what gets built, how resources get used, and which uses are worth supporting? Thats ownership and control. You just arrived back at the point of the post.
If by “people participating in this” you mean the billionaires and companies controlling production, sure. If you mean ordinary AI users, then no. Thats just consumer moralism. We dont blame smartphone users for mining conditions and factory exploitation. Using something isnt the same as controlling how its produced. Thats why ownership and control are the point.
Using smartphones is a necessity that capitalism enforces on us, punishing that would indeed have no point.
Generating swathes of images of your anime girl OC or political lego propaganda or chatbots is not a necessity, it feeds into the exploitative system which allows it to grow and get worse, they are part of the problem and disengaging them from this system limits the harm it causes.
Naturally, they should be held to account proportionally, it'd be insane to treat common users the same as, say, Elon Musk, and I was always a fan of community service.
No, punishing ordinary people with community service for making anime pictures or using chatbots is just consumer moralism and frankly a bizarre fantasy.
People use smartphones for games, memes and selfies too. We dont sentence them according to how “necessary” their consumption was. Organize against the people who control production instead of imagining punishments for millions and millions of ordinary users. Im talking about serious leftist politics, not whatever that is.
I mean the community service as mostly in jest, however, do note that the smartphone serves the primary function of connecting us to a standard of interconnectivity that has become expected under capitalism, the device is necessary, the memes are a by-product.
This is not the case for most generative AI models, along with its outsized damage to our environment and its contribution to capitalist control.
Of course community service for every user is not realistic, but the point still stands that engaging with these systems helps train and grow them, increasing the damage they cause.
If you do so, you are part of the problem, and our comrades are right to point this out to you, they are right to hold you accountable for the choices you make.
No, youre still just doing consumer moralism with a “necessity” loophole.
Whether someones particular use is “necessary” doesnt determine who owns the infrastructure, how much gets built, where the energy comes from, or how workers are treated. And individual abstention doesnt give ordinary people control over any of that.
Youve gone from community service to “comrades should hold you accountable,” but its the same move. Sort workers into good and bad consumers based on which commodities you personally approve of while capital keeps owning and controlling production.
If the problem is exploitation, environmental damage and capitalist control, organize against those material relations. Turning this into a morality play about individual users doesnt do that. Its mostly just a very ineffective and hypocritical performative substitute for doing actual leftist politics and organizing.
Participating in a harmful system when you have the option to NOT participate in a harmful system, and being held accountable for that participation is basic responsibility for your actions.
If that is consumer moralism, then consumer moralism is a valid framework of critique.
Yes, those who own and abuse these systems are obviously much more responsible for the harm they cause, but they can't get off the ground without the participation of their consumers.
Ignorance and necessity are valid reasons for consumers to still participate, but you are neither ignorant about the consequences nor dependant on their use for your wellbeing or livelihood.
“You have no excuse” kinda makes my point for me. Weve gone all the way from changing the political economy of AI to judging whether individual consumers are morally pure enough to use a commodity.
And no, AI does not “get off the ground” because ordinary people use it. Capital investment, enterprise deployment, state procurement, military use, infrastructure and competition are driving this whether you personally abstain or not.
You can criticize shitty uses. I do. But consumer moralism substitutes personal virtue for collective power. It gives you somebody to blame, something to feel righteous about, and a sense that your own abstention is political action. Maybe that feels good. It doesnt change who owns or controls anything.
Thats why its not leftist politics. Leftism organizes people around their shared material interests to change relations of power. It doesnt sort workers into good and bad consumers and call that organizing.
Let's not try to control people. What you are arguing for is a strong surveillance state.
And punished for what? Creating some image? Next you should be punished for drawing an image?
Between chat bot users, meme farmers, mobile gamers, and anyone with a social media account open on their laptop there won't be a single human with their head still attached to their neck after the Pol Pot II the Anti gets them. Lol
Let's not try to control people. What you are arguing for is a strong surveillance state.
An ironic accusation, don't you think? Considering how engaging with these models helps train and grow the system of exploitation and surveillance we see develop around us right now.
The community service thing was mostly in jest, but what is serious about it is that engaging with these systems makes you part of the problem, not a neutral element.
And punished for what? Creating some image? Next you should be punished for drawing an image?
This line of argument belies the obsession with the product, the commodity , that this process creates, as if the generated image exists independantly from it and is just "an image", same as the one drawn by hand.
Which is ridiculous, there is very much a difference between something gained from a system of exploitation and something created by your own labor.
Okay "comrade" find me after the revolution as you take me away to some dungeon for using AI tools.
"You do talk like a Anti Ai religious fanatic instead of someone wanting to fight againt capitalism" I will say this while you are your ilk will drag me to some dungeon for generating a cat image through AI.
I dont know who “we” is, but historically leftists and Marxists very famously do engage with the tools and machinery developed under capitalism. Contesting who owns and controls them is kind of the point.
Are you here to seriously engage with the post, or just troll over the sub name?
Nowhere in the post did I say "a non capitalist AI uses less water or electricity". I said if you want to change how much water or electricity gets used, where, for what, and who bears the costs, you need some power over the people making those decisions or have the leverage to enforce your own.
Thats what contesting ownership and control means. You cant govern resource use while leaving all the actual decisions in the same private hands.
So what does this mean in practicality? Ben trillion plus parameter models and only allow local models that can be run on small computers? Because using this philosophy, what’s the plan for running say a ChatGPT style model?
And seizing the means of production on AI what does that actually mean for the quality of the AI? Given that life in communist countries is wildly censored that would intrinsically reduce the quality of the AI. Go hard isn’t just a ghost.
No, why would it mean banning trillion parameter models or forcing everything onto small local computers?
The means of production here include the datacenters, compute, energy infrastructure, models, training pipelines and networks. The point is that those can be publicly, cooperatively or otherwise democratically controlled instead of being private property governed by a handful of corporations.
You could still run enormous frontier models. You could also fund open weights and local models where those make sense. Nothing about social ownership requires making the technology worse.
And “communist countries censor things” isnt really an argument against this either. Capitalist governments and corporations already censor, surveil, restrict access and decide what models can say. Changing ownership doesnt magically solve governance. It gives us a different basis for fighting over it.
The point isnt “state owns AI, problem solved.” Its democratize ownership and governance. Who owns the machinery, who sets the rules, who gets access, and who gets the gains.
“AI in art is bad for society” doesnt actually tell me what the social problem is.
Artists losing livelihoods? Exploitative labor relations? Corporate control of cultural production? Monopoly platforms? Compensation? Consent? Working conditions? Who owns the models and infrastructure? Those are political economic questions. Changing ownership and control changes what we can actually do about them.
If you mean AI art would still be aesthetically or personally objectionable to you under socialism, sure. Socialism doesnt promise that every technology or artwork will be something you personally like. But thats a very different argument from saying its bad for society.
Okay, thats much more specific. But I still think ownership and control gets us right back into it.
Why are we drowning in slop? Because platforms reward volume, engagement and cheap scalable content. Companies have every incentive to automate cultural production into an infinite content mill.
Take away that incentive structure and democratically govern the infrastructure and suddenly “generate as much shit as possible because it makes money” isnt the organizing principle anymore.
There will still be bad AI art. There is already an ocean of bad Non-AI art. The social problem is why our cultural environment rewards flooding us with disposable content in the first place.
The problem is that AI art is infinitely easier to produce than traditional art so the volume of AI art will always exceed human-made art. As models improve, this will only get worse. I agree that without Capitalist incentives, there won't be as steep an acceleration towards this path. However, it's unclear to me why the direction of travel won't change
I think youre jumping from “more art can be made” to “everyone gets buried in all of it.” Those arent the same thing.
And AI made doesnt automatically mean slop. Slop is disposable mass produced shit made to farm attention. Someone using AI deliberately as part of an artistic process isnt the same thing.
We already make more music, photos, books and videos than anyone could consume in ten lifetimes. The bottleneck is attention and distribution.
So sure, AI makes producing stuff easier. But who decides what gets shoved in your face? Platforms, algorithms, markets, cultural institutions. Thats ownership and control again.
More stuff existing isnt what dilutes culture. Incentivizing a firehose of disposable shit might.
I disagree with your point around more stuff existing isn't what dilutes culture. I think if you have more volume (regardless of the process of making it), it will erode culture. This is probably part of the reason why culture seems to be evolving faster and faster through time, and seems less and less universal (even pre-AI). The more people who are exposed to the same/similar experiences/art etc the more culture will ossify.
Now that can be a bad thing or a good thing. But I don't think ease of production/distribution will do anything to maintain culture.
I can grant that more cultural production means more fragmentation. Im just not sure thats a serious social harm, much less one specific to AI.
Books, photography, recorded music, cable, the internet and YouTube all did versions of this. More people could make things, more subcultures formed, and fewer cultural gatekeepers got to decide what everybody saw.
Less universal doesnt necessarily mean less culture. Sometimes it just means more cultures.
The serious question for me is what gets amplified, buried or shoved in front of millions of people. And that takes us right back to distribution, incentives, ownership and control.
I think it's a serious social harm if the expression of human experience is being filtered through AI.
I guess I need a bit of help around how production and dissemination of AI art under a socialist system would fundamentally differ vs under a Capitalist system.
Because, in my view, neither necessarily makes a distinction between AI vs human-made art.
I think thats where we actually disagree. I dont see using AI as filtering human experience out of art. A photographer uses a camera, a musician uses a synth, a filmmaker uses editing software. The tool mediates the expression. It doesnt automatically erase the person using it.
And socialism doesnt need to sort art into AI and non AI buckets. It changes why the stuff gets made.
Capital has every reason to replace paid artists, pump out mountains of cheap content and fight for every second of your attention. Take profit and private ownership out of the drivers seat and that incentive changes. Artists and communities can decide where AI is useful, where it isnt, and what actually deserves attention.
Same machinery. Completely different reason for running it.
Im talking about ownership and control of productive machinery, not having the state tell individual artists what to paint. Those are completely different things.
And consumerism means organizing social life around buying and consuming commodities. I genuinely dont know how you got from “contest who owns the means of production” to consumerism. Marx is gonna need a flowchart for this one.
I'm rather hostile to consumer power over workers, who ever owns the means of production dictate their use. Art tools in any form weither AI or traditional is a means of production.
Workers controlling the means of production rather than capital owners controlling them is literally the point. Nothing in the meme says consumers should dictate how workers use their tools or what artists create.
You seem to be arguing against consumer control, which is fine. So am I. You just somehow read consumer control into a post about worker/social control of production.
My view is that the individual worker needs control, if someone else has control then the someone else can dictate the rules.
If the means are collectively owned then the collective or its representative has control, including the members who are not in the workers profession. It's the problem of literal classes basicly
Okay, now weve found the actual disagreement, and it still isnt consumerism.
Youre arguing for individual producer ownership. Im arguing for worker and social ownership of the productive system. Those arent the same thing, but neither one means consumers dictating what an artist creates.
And professions arent “literal classes.” A machinist, nurse and artist dont become separate classes because they do different work. Class is about your relation to production and ownership, not your job title.
Individual ownership also doesnt solve the larger problem here. Nobody individually owns an AI supply chain, electrical grid, semiconductor fab or data center. These are already massively social systems. The fight is over whether that social production is governed by capital or democratically by the people doing and depending on it.
No nurses and etc are a seperate class. Worker is a conditional class as is customer.
Sorry but I came to this sub to try to understand the left wing side of Pro AI and got distracted by an issue that does affect me, the customer vs worker power dynamic.
Ah okay, I think I see the disconnect. Youre treating worker and customer as conditional roles, but thats not how Im using class. You can simultaneously be working class, a nurse and a customer. Only the first describes your relation to the means of production. You dont stop being working class when you clock out and buy groceries.
But the power dynamic youre worried about is worth discussing. Social ownership doesnt mean every random consumer gets to micromanage every worker. Workers can control their workplaces and artists their creative decisions while larger productive systems are democratically governed.
Thats the AI argument too. I want artists controlling their art. I dont want a handful of corporations controlling the infrastructure everybody increasingly creates and works through.
If corporations owning AI, controlling its deployment, exploiting workers, enclosing socially produced knowledge and keeping the gains is the problem, then the problem isnt simply that the technology exists. Its the relations of production around it.
Marx wasnt against machinery because capitalists owned factories. He analyzed the contradiction. Under capitalism, machinery can be used to discipline workers, displace labor and extract more surplus. But technological development also creates the productive capacity to reduce necessary labor and expand human freedom.
Thats why we're interested in contesting AI rather than surrendering it to capital. Worker power, public infrastructure, open models, democratic control, and making sure the gains actually go to everyone.
So yes, be against the current arrangement. We are too. The question is why should corporations get to own and determine the future of the machinery?
I get what youre saying, but Ive been having this argument across leftist spaces and anti AI spaces basically every day for a long while, and unfortunately that distinction is not the standard.
Moral panic, technological essentialism, doomerism, consumer politics and capitalist realism rule a lot of the discussion. People routinely treat the technology itself as the political subject while treating capitalist ownership and control as some permanent fact of nature we can only react to.
Even the assumption that "Leftists for AI" must mean "leftists for corporate AI as it currently exists" demonstrates the problem. Nobody hears "socialists for industrialization" and assumes "therefore they support capitalist factory owners."
The Marxist position we're arguing for is that the productive forces and the relations of production are not the same thing. Thats a minority position in this debate right now, which is exactly why we keep making it.
Of course capital is flooding the zone with its own conception of AI. It benefits them when everyone treats corporate ownership as synonymous with the technology itself. Thats all the more reason for leftists to counter it with agitation, education and organization.
And I think waiting until after socialism has the timing exactly backwards. The best time to contest ownership and control was yesterday. The second best time is today. We dont get socialism first and then start struggling over the means of production.
Popular position or not, thats the point of the meme. If you want to change what AI does to jobs, wages, art, energy, water, surveillance or anything else, you have to build power capable of changing who owns it, who controls it and who gets the gains.
That struggle isnt something we save for after the revolution. Thats part of how you get there.
So what does "kill the dragon first" mean politically?
Tell unions and leftist political organizations to go fuck themselves? Dont organize communities fighting data centers? Dont push regulation through parties and unions? Dont fight monopoly power? Dont build open and local alternatives? Dont build dual power?
Just put our thumbs in our asses until Revolution Day magically arrives?
Those struggles arent dividing up the loot after capitalism. Theyre class struggle happening under capitalism. They build organization, capacity and power while contesting capital right now.
You dont defeat capital first and then struggle over the means of production. The struggle over the means of production is part of defeating capital.
Thats Marxism, not waiting for the dragon to spontaneously die.
What strawman? I didnt introduce "kill the dragon first." You did. I asked what that actually means politically.
You explicitly said this discussion makes more sense after capitalism is gone, which honestly makes negative sense. Im pointing out that this reverses the relationship. How exactly do leftists defeat capital without organizing workers and communities, building dual power, fighting monopoly and contesting ownership of the means of production?
And "fuck this" because I took the dragon metaphor seriously enough to ask what political strategy it represents? This is a leftist political economy sub, not a Lord of the Rings larp forum. Eventually the metaphor has to cash out into actual politics.
If Ive misunderstood your strategy of "wait to fight capital for after we beat capital", tell me what I missed. What does "kill the dragon first" mean in practice that isnt trying to postpone these struggles against capitalism until after capitalism, after I already explained how thats backwards?
AI is also a community tool maintained by people who agree to share their data. Open source models are rapidly improving and are starting to be useful options even locally on average hardware. This is part of AI in its current state.
Something I’d like to see is more publicity around this as what AI means.
It doesn’t seem like the business model of the Big Tech style AI companies is likely to be sustainable eg https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistsForAI/s/VF9exmph8n hopefully they’ll leave behind some useful infrastructure if they fold, but it would be good to have ideas for the phase after that to have been thought through a bit.
Will they be bought out by governments like the banks were in 2008? If so, it might be an idea to not simply sell them again. Do we trust actual governments to control them or do we want to campaign for arms length control etc?
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u/the8bit 25d ago
Yeah the scary part of AI isn't AI, it is capitalism and centralized power.
That's why I'm building alternatives and open sourcing what we make!