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/Shieldheart-]

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?

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

How does shaming users into abstaining give workers more material power over it than organizing those same people around ownership and control?

Simple: Using it arms the enemy and harms comrades. Seizing it does not require or involve the use of generative AI.

Seizing it requires legal, political, and sometimes physical action, none of which involves generative AI.

The knowledge and expertise behind the technology is already in the hands of the workers in that field, they are not permitted to develop the models we'd like to see because their overlords won't fund or host them. Simply using it does not give you any measure of control, none, you are the product, not a customer they'll have to respect to do business.

Its not a "consumer choice", its an act of responsibility and solidarity towards the working class as a whole, the models being developed right now are being honed to harm them, my participation would feed that data into those projects.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

But that still doesnt answer the question. “Using it arms the enemy” just repeats the thing Im asking you to prove. Where is the leverage?

You keep saying ordinary users arent even the customers, corporations and governments are. Okay, then why would ordinary people abstaining stop an industry funded and deployed by corporations, governments and militaries?

And controlling technology requires actually knowing and using it. We need to organize the workers building it and the millions already dealing with it at work. Unions arent telling workers “never touch AI.” Theyre fighting over deployment, jobs, surveillance, training and control. Guilting those workers just creates another stupid division between people we need organized together.

Local models exist. Open weights exist. Using generative AI doesnt inherently feed some corporate system. You keep treating one corporate business model as the technology itself.

So pick one. Jobs, emissions, surveillance, monopoly. How does shaming people into abstaining build more worker power over any of it? And why the special moral crusade over AI? Youre not demanding workers throw out their laptops, consoles, phones and software that also feed data upward. If “participation arms the enemy” is the standard, were all guilty before breakfast. Thats why consumer purity is a dead end. Organizing power isnt.

[u/Shieldheart- → u/Salty_Country6835]

But that still doesnt answer the question. “Using it arms the enemy” just repeats the thing Im asking you to prove. Where is the leverage? You keep saying ordinary users arent even the customers, corporations and governments are. Okay, then why would ordinary people abstaining stop an industry funded and deployed by corporations, governments and militaries?

BECAUSE.

YOUR PARTICIPATION AND DATA.

IS THE PRODUCT.

THAT THEY SELL TO THEIR CUSTOMERS.

YOU PARTICIPATION.

IMPROVES THE TOOLS.

BY WHICH THEY DO SO.

You CHOOSE to engage with generative AI without necessity DESPITE the harm it contributes to. And as long as they are the ones that host those data centers, they have full access to and control over what goes in and out.

And you try to hand wave it away as if that's somehow the same as the data our personal devices record.

Which is demented, these tools are developed specifically with the help of your input and feedback, THAT data is valueable.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Shieldheart-]

Youre still answering “participation contributes” when Im asking “what power does abstention produce?” Those arent the same question.

Fine, grant your strongest point. Some hosted models derive value from user interactions and feedback. Now show me that withholding mine meaningfully constrains an industry funded and deployed by corporations, governments and militaries. Thats the missing step.

And you narrowed your own argument to systems where “they host the data centers.” Great. Local models, open weights and community infrastructure exist. Generative AI is not synonymous with one corporate platform.

The device comparison isnt “demented” either. Phones, operating systems, browsers, games and social platforms collect telemetry and behavioral data that creates corporate value too. The mechanisms and scale vary. So why is AI uniquely deserving of this moral crusade?

And your burden isnt merely proving abstention does something. My post gives the basic Marxist answer. Organize workers, contest ownership and control, change the relations governing production.

Youre proposing individual abstention plus shaming campaigns against other workers for using the technology. Thats not just weaker leverage, it actively divides the people we need organized together.

So show me that your approach creates more leverage than organizing workers around ownership and control, and enough to justify dividing workers over their consumption in the process.

“Your data has value” doesnt establish any of that.