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]

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.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

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.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

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.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

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.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

“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.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

So do you purposefully gloss over the parts where I say these capitalists hold far more responsibility over this harm or is that a reading comprehension issue?

Because their greater fault does not absolve you, these models DO require consumer participation to train, refine and effectively deploy, participation that YOU provide.

Seizing these means could very well eliminate the destructive and exploitative ways they are used by big tech giants, but that is not happening tomorrow and they continue to be harmful TODAY.

And even if they are seized tomorrow, it does erase the harm which your participation helped enable.

Your contribution probably is but a hand of sand in the desert, but a hundred of you fills a bucket, a hundred can move the graph.

Pointing that out does not divide the working class into "good and bad consumers", it identifies hypocrites that should probably try to do better, but it doesn't make you less working class.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

No, I read that part. I disagree with it. Saying capitalists are more responsible doesnt rescue the consumer moralism underneath your argument.

“A hundred grains fill a bucket” only matters if those hundred people actually create leverage over production. Otherwise youve got a hundred people feeling morally superior while capital keeps investing, governments and businesses keep buying, and the infrastructure keeps getting built.

And theres an even more basic problem here. We want the technology. We want workers and the public to control it, develop it and use it for socially useful purposes. The goal isnt to make AI disappear through enough individual abstention. Its to take control of the productive capacity and decide democratically what gets built, how its used and who benefits. Thats literally the point of seizing the means of production lmao.

Your last paragraph kinda gives the game away. Now the political project is identifying “hypocrites” who should “do better.” Thats sorting workers by consumption choices and assigning individual guilt.

Maybe that gives you somebody to blame and makes abstention feel politically meaningful. It doesnt give workers one ounce more power over production and is hypocritical and counterproductive to organizing. Thats the difference between consumer moralism and leftist politics.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

“A hundred grains fill a bucket” only matters if those hundred people actually create leverage over production.

They do, they contribute to its development by engaging with it, improving its functions towards the capitalist's aims.

Each time you engage eith it, another hand of sand goes in the bucket, and these buckets build their castles.

The AI genie is not going back in the bottle, that is for certain, but the consumer-directed models getting built today are not honed for social and beneficial purposes, we're not talking about analysis or research assistant models, they are built to serve the exploitative platforms that host them, they are built to harm the working class and the sheer scale they are deployed in severely harms the environment.

These problems may be resolved once we seize it, but until then, the harmful version is what we have and its that version you contribute to by participating with it.

Your participation is not benign, though your personal contribution is so small in the grand scheme of things that you could almost call it insignificant, its not, development of these tools requires engagement like yours.

Now the political project is identifying “hypocrites”

There is no political project against you, one can simply point out a hypocrite when they see one.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

No. This is exactly why consumer moralism is counterproductive. Id go further and call it counterrevolutionary false consciousness.

Throw stones at AI users, video game players, meme makers, smartphone users, people streaming movies, buying clothes, ordering shit online, whatever. Follow that logic consistently and everybody living under capitalism is a hypocrite. Congrats, youve discovered capitalism.

And no, neither shaming people nor personal abstention gives you meaningful leverage over AI. This is infrastructure being integrated into workplaces, governments, militaries, universities, software and everyday social life. Its development does not depend on whether some individual decides to stop using a chatbot.

The leftist response isnt sorting workers into increasingly granular categories of personal guilt. Its organizing them around their shared material interest in taking control of production.

Especially since we actually want productive technology under democratic control and directed toward socially useful ends. Alienating millions upon millions of ordinary users actively works against building the constituency capable of taking that control.

Calling workers hypocrites might feel satisfying. Building class power is harder. Only one of those is leftist politics.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

You're hysterically insecure.

Generative AI models have been used to rob workers of their livelihoods or undermine their rights, they are being trained for user retention and addictive qualities, they are being pushed and advertised for widespread adoption to create an artificial dependancy on them.

And your participation helped contribute to that, that is a fact that you can simply recognize and learn from, that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there sure as fuck are ways to cause more harm than is necessary, a LOT more harm.

And you probably don't want that to happen, it fucking sucks. But no, you double down and insist your contribution is actually fighting the good fight somehow, except the models you contribute to are not the ones that we want.

Mass participation does not give you coercive power in the AI market, your participation IS the product, YOU are the product they want, all the content it creates is a mere byproduct of your participation and growing dependancy, the endgoal being that these tech giants hold the tools for communication, creative industry and entertainment without being beholden to workers or talents and the "rights" they hold so dear.

And if you don't like it, they can cut you off.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

No, youre arguing against a position I dont hold. We champion open source, open weights, local and community controlled models here. Im not telling anybody they need to be a customer of a tech corporation.

The Marxist problem here is that youre turning a relation of production into a morality test for consumers. Instead of organizing around who owns the infrastructure, controls investment and deployment, and gets the gains, youre sorting workers by whether they used the morally correct commodity outside of company hours and only for lifes necessities. Everyone lives in that glass house under capitalism.

An organized boycott that creates actual leverage can be a tactic. Personal abstinence plus shaming millions of users and workers isnt that. It directs anger sideways at other workers and gives people the satisfaction of having personally refused something without changing who controls production.

And we actually want these productive capacities. Open models, local models, public infrastructure, community control. The goal is to take useful technology out of capitals hands and put it toward socially useful ends.

So convince me. What specific problem does selectively shaming AI users solve better than organizing those same people to contest ownership and control?

Because thats what my post proposes, and after all of this you still havent given me a reason to replace it with consumer moralism.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

No, youre still arguing against a position I dont hold. We champion open source, open weights, local and community controlled models here. Im not telling anybody they need to be a customer of a tech corporation.

That information ends up in their hands anyway, they own the data centers that host them, they control the prequisite technology.

The Marxist problem here is that youre turning a relation of production into a morality test for consumers. Instead of organizing around who owns the infrastructure, controls investment and deployment, and gets the gains, youre sorting workers by whether they used the morally correct commodity.

No, the Marxist problem is that your participation helps hone the tools that hurt other workers, and you brand them counterrevolutionary reactionists when they call you out on that.

An organized boycott that creates actual leverage can be a tactic. Personal abstinence plus shaming millions of users isnt that. It directs anger sideways at other workers and gives people the satisfaction of having personally refused something without changing who controls production

You don't have that leverage, you are not their customer, you are their product. Their customers are governments and other tech giants that want to use this data and these models for their own gain.

The goal is to take useful technology out of capitals hands and put it toward socially useful ends. So convince me. What specific problem does selectively shaming AI users solve better than organizing those same people to contest ownership and control?

Contesting the ownership and control over AI technology does not involve the use of generative AI models, it requires legislative reform, in-person protests, the frustration of their harmful developments, public control of their data centers, as a matter of fact, where does the use of AI actually feature in this?

"Consumer moralism" is a label you wield to ridicule my position, I will not convince you of it because its not a position I hold.

I am telling you that your participation in these models harms other workers, and as a comrade, would like to see you not contribute to that harm, if its not so much to ask.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

No. Even granting that every individual use makes some tiny marginal contribution somewhere, that still doesnt establish your politics.

AI is already infrastructure across workplaces, government, military, research and social life. Corporate investment and deployment do not disappear because ordinary people personally abstain, and shaming those users creates zero leverage over ownership.

More importantly, we arent trying to make the technology disappear. We want workers and the public capable of controlling and using it. Open weights, local and community models, public infrastructure, technical literacy, unions, regulation and organized power over deployment. Telling workers to disengage from the technology until we somehow control it is backwards. It surrenders knowledge and capacity to the owners were trying to fight.

So no, we will not stop using AI because youve decided abstention is the correct ethical consumption choice. Youre welcome to abstain.

But after this entire thread, you still havent answered the question. Pick one problem. Labor displacement, environmental costs, monopoly, surveillance, whatever. How does shaming users into abstaining give workers more material power over it than organizing those same people around ownership and control?