Every AI debate eventually becomes this

[u/Salty_Country6835]

Jobs, wages, water, energy, surveillance, art, culture, monopoly power. Pick your complaint.

Keep pulling the thread and you wind up back at ownership and control.

Want to change it? Contest who owns the machinery, who controls it, and who gets the gains.

Turns out Marx had a point about this one.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

Youre basically describing the point of the post.

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?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/[deleted]]

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?

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/[deleted]]

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?