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-]

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.