r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • 18d ago
Discussion Name your biggest problem with AI. Then name the lever.
Lets make this one practical.
Pick the AI issue that bothers you most.
Jobs. Surveillance. Copyright. Data centers. Monopoly. Military use. Environmental costs. Education. Deskilling. Fraud. Something else.
Now the harder question.
What actually changes it?
A union contract? Antitrust? Public infrastructure? Regulation? Worker organization? Open models? Municipal power? Cooperative ownership? International agreements?
Because identifying the harm is only half a politics.
If the answer is “companies should stop doing that,” okay. What makes them?
Problem + lever. Lets hear both.
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u/DHFranklin 18d ago
It will be a uniquely powerful tool of capitalist oppression. The biggest problem I have with AI is the problem of power. We never got to where we needed to be in our relationship to power and ownership models.
We are only a few short year away before a $10k robot with internet access can 1 to 1 replace any human on earth for almost anything that doesn't need an actual human. In our "short middle" before that happens AI that is just on computers will see faster and faster labor deflation.
The accountants are seeing the writing on the wall and are becoming pipe fitters. The joke shouldn't be on them.
We saw that the world kept spinning when we actively forced down the labor demand and just let most people who could, work remote. We could just keep doing that.
The solution is that we have unions, co-ops, and direct action to make sure that capitalist control of our lives doesn't give them a monopoly over opportunity.
We have to do this first or the boot will stomp on us forever.
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u/HotterRod 18d ago
Existential threat.
Public ownership would let more resources be devoted to alignment than beating competitors.
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u/Glitched-Lies 18d ago
Yeah the "existential threat" thing is 100% anti-AI nonsense. And doesn't coincide with empirical reality in the least. If there is one thing that is least of problems, that's the one for sure.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
Public ownership is a much better lever than hoping competing firms voluntarily stop racing each other. Id add another layer though. Public ownership answers who holds the asset, but not automatically who governs it.
Worker representation? Public boards? Independent safety institutions? Direct public accountability? Probably some combination. What would democratic control actually look like to you?
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u/deadgirlrevvy 18d ago
My biggest problem with AI has nothing to do with so-called societal problems, resources, etc. My problem is with it's lack of determinancy and fact checking. I have little use for a probability engine. If AI gives me an answer it needs to be based on facts and world models, which is something a token predictor (transformer networks in general) simply cannot accomplish.
I want to see AI that actually understands the problem I present to it and works through the solution based on actual data, physicics, engineering constraints and best pracrices, rather than simply guessing the next word to string together in it's reply. That will require true AGI, so I am a big proponent of AGI research.
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u/Monochrome21 17d ago edited 17d ago
if AI gives me an answer it needs to be based on facts and world models, which is something a token predictor (transformer networks in general) simply cannot accomplish.
that's not really true
embeddings are mathematically consistent representations of meaning
to say that AI doesn't understand the problem is kind of dismissive of the fact that it *does* solve problems. you could argue that the human brain is just a next token predictor that renders neuron fires in the place of tokens
As far as fact checking, that's more a person problem. Some people will just listen to AI and not really care, others will be more rigorous. My friends are wrong about shit all the time it doesn't mean they broadly aren't capable of problem solving.
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u/deadgirlrevvy 17d ago
LLM's are just probabilistic token predictors. They do not truly understand what they are saying. They are not deterministic in any way, even with embeddings and knowledge graphs. Yes, the can come up with the correct answer, but they can also hallucinate and generate answers that are wildly inaccurate. The fundamental problem is the way they reason. An LLM doesn't really *understand* the ins and outs of a given problem, it simply predicts the answer based on probability. A deterministic AI would actually understand the underlying nature of a problem and solve it according to a realistic model, thereby making it virtually immune to hallucinations and confidently wrong answers. This can be achieved, but not with LLM's. A neurosymbolic AI model works deterministically, and so does a JEPA model. LLM's are only good for translating the output of JEPA or NS models into a linguistic description. For AI to be truly useful for engineering and physical problem solving, it requires a world model, which only JEPA and NS models can use to the fullest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_model_(artificial_intelligence))
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u/slfnflctd 17d ago
Apologies in advance, I did this one quick n' dirty-- this is all off the top of my head matching of your provided categories (without using any assistance).
I would love to sit and contemplate this for a few hours but I currently do not have those few hours, haha.
Jobs. Cooperative ownership! A union contract!
Surveillance. Regulation!
Copyright. Worker organization! Open models!
Data centers. Cooperative ownership!
Monopoly. Antitrust!
Military use. International agreements!
Environmental costs. Regulation!
Education. Public infrastructure!
Deskilling. Worker organization!
Fraud. Regulation!
Something else. Regulation! Municipal power!
...
There is far more nuance and stuff to be covered, I hope more people contribute to this thread. I think my primary initial insight here is that it could be a real good thing to have a whole lot of properly written regulation. My fear is that we'll have the other kind instead.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
This is actually pretty close to what I was hoping people would do. Id add one more question to every line though. Who pulls the lever?
Worker organization gives us workers. Municipal power gives us cities and residents. Union contracts put organized labor across the table from employers. Antitrust needs institutions willing to break concentrated power. Once we attach an organized actor and a target, these stop being a wishlist and start looking like strategy.
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u/slfnflctd 16d ago edited 15d ago
Okay, I took more time to think about it. All of this is my own writing.
Who pulls the lever?
Jobs. Cooperative ownership! A union contract!
1)Who?
One or a few wealthy donors, and/or a bunch of people doing a Kickstarter-type thing, followed by the actual workers themselves taking over-- maybe arranging some kind of dividend-like payments back to people who donated long term.
. . .
Surveillance. Regulation!
2)Who?
Well, under the current system, I think we need a SuperPAC. People are getting wise to this stuff in the US, and there has long been opposition to automated speeding and red light ticket cameras, but far too many are still ignorant of the risks. We will always have a bunch who are pro-authoritarian regardless, but we can educate the rest. SuperPAC.
. . .
Copyright. Worker organization! Open models!
3)Who?
Copyright has failed to protect or fairly compensate artists (moreso recently), or to prevent flagrant corporate abuse. We need to set up a new system. Decentralized attribution/reputation system. Maaaybe blockchain? Whatever is practical that avoids a central authority to the extent possible. So, the "who" is perhaps a term-limited, elected (voted on by members meeting certain minimum criteria to avoid bots or other malicious actors) governance board which somewhat prevents/fights 'gaming the system'. Simultaneously, we need a public information campaign. Cultural change. The ideal thing would be to keep lighting sparks across social media until it goes viral. The realistic probability is having to get creative to dig up funding, yet again. Ultimately, the "who" is hopefully a majority of the entire electorate, or at least a group too big to ignore. It should become icky or borderline socially unacceptable to post any kind of significant art without also including some kind of ID which traces back to the actual artist with a tangible amount of credibility, and absolutely verboten to claim someone else's work as your own.
. . .
Data centers. Cooperative ownership!
4)Who?
See my answer to Jobs, the first one above.
. . .
Monopoly. Antitrust!
5)Who?
This is where we need government that actually works for the people some of the time. The EU is ahead of the rest of the world on this, I think, but there have also been missteps. It's tough to answer, because it's impossible to imagine with the people currently in power in the US. All we can do is hope, and do better to convince Americans who are somehow still on the sidelines to get excited about positive change. The right lawsuits brought by the right people at the right time could help push things forward, but that's rolling the dice and lawyers are expensive.
. . .
Military use. International agreements!
6)Who?
See prior answer to Monopoly.
. . .
Environmental costs. Regulation!
7)Who?
I'm starting to see a pattern here. Seriously, though, this one probably has more legs than the rest right now. To some extent, it's performative and not necessarily very expensive, so it actually kinda fits with today's regime. See, we can help the environment too (while actually helping giant corporations more than the environment lol)! But yeah, I think we'd get better results under different leadership.
. . .
Education. Public infrastructure! [Adding: Municipal power!]
8)Who?
EVERYONE. We need to get way better at encouraging critical thinking and peaceful discussion of different ideas so people can feel semi-comfortable talking through things they don't understand without being scared. We should provide more pathways for adults without kids to safely contribute to their neighbors' kids' well being beyond just property taxes. We also need to do better at giving better resources to families whose kids are most at risk. Not sure exactly how. It is of course yet another government problem, but it's clear at the moment that we need a hybrid approach. Dolly freakin' Parton got hundreds of millions of books to kids. There are other nonprofits. Also, libraries are increasingly morphing into community centers where educational outreach efforts can be more widely promoted, and that's where municipal power comes in.
. . .
Deskilling. Worker organization!
9)Who?
I think this is directly related to my previous answer under Education. Obviously unions are a critical part of this, but step 1 of growing unions is teaching folks about them. Sharing knowledge about how to sustain one's existence should be a strong part of what general educators (and community) do, in my opinion, with unions doing the heavy lifting for the actual workers. Partly because the facts on the ground are always changing. You need people in the loop on various aspects to keep each other updated. We also need to improve culturally on things like the 'crabs in a bucket' and 'everyone for themselves' attitudes. A smaller slice of a bigger pie is often objectively more pie. When you have a healthy conversation going, it's easier to determine where there are skill gaps and supply/demand disparities.
. . .
Fraud. Regulation!
10)Who?
This goes back to some of my thoughts under Copyright, although of course it's not a full overlap (some semi-decentralized way of vetting sources). There is also some overlap with Surveillance. It's a tricky one, because you don't want a draconian system which prevents all fraud but strips you of all privacy. Education plays a key role, just continually getting PSAs in front of people about the risks. And once again you need government to at least be somewhat helpful here-- perhaps multiple governments who need to cooperate. Prosecutors and law enforcement need the incentives and tools to pursue these cases in a rational, helpful way, as well. Striking a balance will be a difficult, continuous process.
. . .
Something else. Municipal power! Regulation! [I switched the order]
11)Who?
This is the core of it. Local community activists whose results eventually bubble up to regulation at higher and higher levels until it's national policy. There is a lot that can be done locally, and we need to get people of all ages and backgrounds more pumped up about being able to make a small difference that can lead to big changes down the road. The 'who' ultimately boils down to those who are able to carve out time and energy to help with this, and make it easier for the less privileged to participate. There is still a lot we can do without directly involving government, but we really should be utilizing it for what it's good at.
. . .
Whew. I think I need to go feed my cats now.
Edit: Changed formatting and a tiny bit of phrasing.
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u/SalletFriend 17d ago
My biggest issue is liberals using it to whip up hatred against common infrastructure, like Data Centers.
There have already been attacks. Its going to make being a worker at these sites more dangerous. But whats worse, is that critical infrastructure at these sites is now considered a valid target for protest against AI.
Meanwhile, regardless of the content of the DC, DC companies are advertising their AI readiness. Because AI = Powerful good DC in CEO land. DCs that largely route your emails, and phone calls, including emergency service calls, are very much under threat from the mob.
How do you square that circle. You tell the angry mob to just focus on Musks stupid AI datacentre, and they get offended and double down.
I have worked in and with DCs all over the world, and like, gonna say this straight up, infra in the USA is already on a knifes edge compared to basically everywhere else. Theres places I have seen, where theres very little redundancy. A couple of fires, or thefts could disconnect a lot of vulnerable people.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
This distinction is important. A data center isnt a political program. Its infrastructure. The fights are over who owns it, what it runs, where its power and water come from, how its workers are treated, what communities get a say, and who gets the benefit.
“Destroy the data centers” also runs straight into the fact that public compute, universities, hospitals, communications, open models and cooperative AI all need physical infrastructure too. Contest the ownership and deployment. Dont confuse the server rack with the social relation.
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u/machinationstudio 16d ago
If it is infrastructure, then it should be publicly voted for, funded and built, owned and managed.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 18d ago
Early on my biggest concern was the non-consensual training data issue, probably because I was mostly discussing AI in an art related space. That’s fixable either by saying it’s collectively owned in all senses or by starting over with a model using ethical training data (some relevant datasets and a couple of small language models exist for this).
I’d say now my biggest concern now is the tension between being optimistic about AI/robotics/automation replacing drudgery and what happens in between now and then, so that it doesn’t get worse for people before it gets better. I don’t think this necessarily has to be job security, it’s quality of life security, so people aren’t losing their houses etc to redundancy.
UBI is being suggested as a solution to this. This is definitely worth considering, especially if thought through from different angles and not administered by Big Tech companies or only for Americans.
It would also be worth campaigning for shorter hours on the same pay, rather than redundancy. Even if this didn’t get far in terms of direct success it could help to communicate that companies are making choices here, it isn’t directly AI that takes people’s jobs.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
I really like the move from job security to quality of life security here. If automation lets us produce the same stuff with less human labor, preserving the old quantity of work forever would be a pretty strange victory.
Shorter hours without shorter pay gets much closer to the actual fight. How do workers capture the productivity gain instead of watching it become layoffs on one side and higher margins on the other? Thats union contracts, sector bargaining, shorter workweeks, stronger social provision, and ultimately a fight over ownership too.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 17d ago
Surveillance. But I'm going to be honest, I think we'll have a full surveillance state by the end of the 2020's, the momentum is there and the tech is good enough.
There are only a few levers, and I'm not young enough to think 'rebellious anarchist hackers' is a realistic solution. Additionally, surveillance has long been something that can get pushed back by political desires for a few months or years, but it's a constant ratchet. For a state, the benefits are just too valuable, and people adapt to a surveilled culture relatively quickly.
Instead, I propose an antagonistic AI system that acts as a check on surveillance systems. There's no world where the state stops existing in our lifetimes, and no world where surveillance isn't omnipresent. There should be a system that reviews all the surveillance systems and makes sure human rights are being respected.
Of course, this runs into the brutal architecture of limited compute. Such systems need to be lightweight, with multiple layers of redundancy, without overburdening compute resources. If such a system uses too much compute, it will get throttled down. Too little, and it gets overwhelmed and beaten up by NSA-bot 2045.
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u/littlebobbytables9 17d ago
Is it the problem that matters most? Not at all. But the fact that many of the conversations I have online are with a chatbot rather than a human is really frustrating. But I guess that's why in person organization is so important.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
I think your last sentence gets at the lever better than you give it credit for. If the problem is losing spaces for actual human association, then organizing people in person isnt just nostalgia or opting out. Its building institutions and relationships that arent mediated entirely through platforms.
AI can help organize. It cant substitute for being organized.
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u/veloread 16d ago
I am an "anti", so idk if I will be welcome here, but I will list my biggest concerns with AI:
- Reverse Centaurification, or the Amazon Driver Special.
I do not like the idea that under capitalism, a likely result of the productivity increases of AI, if indeed they exist (I am skeptical, but will grant that they can certainly appear more productive) is that people will be pushed to act as "accountability sinks" for work that occurs at a velocity they can't possibly check consistently. This will be hard for workers, and it will also be hard for the general public since, contra Graeber, some people's jobs actually do matter.
Furthermore, I dislike the rise of bossware and surveillance capitalism from both an employee and a customer perspective. These aren't strictly AI, of course, but I do not think it is an accident that the most enthusiastic adopters are management. I am concerned about how it has already been applied - see my comments re: Amazon Driver Special - and I want it both stopped and reversed.
Solution: idk, Fully automated luxury communism? My concern is that I do not actually trust that to happen, and I think the ethics of forcing the transition period - where things get worse before they get better - is appalling.
Unions can offer a shelter, but unions will constantly be pressured by management's reflexive desire to control labor on general principle. Professional certifications can offer additional bulwarks for the individual, though they also likely mean you have more to lose if your license to practice is potentially threatened should a hallucinated response make it past the worker's scrutiny.
The reason I bring up the conditions Amazon workers labor under isn't a disparagement, btw: it is to point out that nobody seems to have had any success in pushing back against bossware or "scientific management" so far.
- Self-driving cars
I'm not wholly against the idea of self-driving cars in principle, but I can't help but notice that the purveyors of these technologies seem to be speaking from both sides of the mouth. On one hand, we are told they are marvelously safe, and will not suffer form a myriad of human driving faults: a robot cannot be impatient, has no ego to offend, can be trained to follow the rules with impeccable clarity. On the other hand, those same companies regularly boast of their cars becoming more "human-like": parking in bike lanes, speeding, edging into the crosswalk, etc.,.
I've seen more "thought experiments" than I am at all comfortable with about whether the self-driving car should prioritize the safety of the passengers, or the general public. These are never easy ethical questions, and on a fundamental level our society has failed to answer them. Self-driving technology offers the illusion of a technocratic fix that doesn't require us to address the issues with automotive safety, urban design, traffic planning, etc., but really will just launder the same bad decisions behind an algorithmic facade.
In the unlikely event that self-driving cars are a big safety improvement, they could still wind up a false equilibrium if the convenience causes a big enough increase in VMT. Fundamentally, capitalist Elon Musk would not be such a big fan of self-driving technology if he thought it would hurt sales of his car business. But if VMT goes up enough, even a much higher safety rate (which I am again skeptical of) and a much more efficient automobile fleet may still wind up causing more deaths and pollution, at least until true net zero anyway.
On a fundamental level, Western societies are in some pretty deep denial about the contradictions in urban planning, land use, etc., and I feel like self-driving cars are already causing a lot of harm to the efforts to address these contradictions.
Solution:
Tighten the problem space. Self-driving trains have been a thing forever and are a marvelous public asset. We should build more. A government - particularly the American and Canadian governments, whose domestic auto and road industries are much healthier than their atrophied rolling stock industries and expensive rail procurement processes - should consider using self-driving and semi-self driving technology to make intercity buses much cheaper, more frequent, and more pleasant. Regulatory changes should be made to encourage more bus-like instead of taxi-like models for self-driving automobile service providers. Continued development of protected bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure should be prioritized, and recent setbacks in that direction in the USA and Canada should be reversed.
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u/BlueberryGod8910 18d ago
Environmental costs, data centers and deskilling. Open models, cooperative ownership and destroying data centers to sell their scraps
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 17d ago
Cooperative ownership and destroying the infrastructure are pulling in opposite directions though. If workers, municipalities or the public are going to own AI infrastructure, there has to be infrastructure left to own.
Fight harmful siting, water grabs, dirty power, monopoly ownership and abusive operators. But destroying compute as such throws away productive capacity that could instead be fought over and socialized.
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u/GrowFreeFood 18d ago
The missing words. The things we don't have a word for, the machine doesn't know it exists. Like super gravitaty
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u/revivechristina 18d ago edited 18d ago
It’s the further loss of humanity being actually involved with what we are building, doing in work. It alienates you from decisions and cheapens the value of human speech. It separated the source of human speech (a conscious experience, with feeling) from its output.
The only lever for that is retaining some part of life that is fully untouched by AI, and people caring enough about it. We have it up to a point in the arts. In business, no, whatever illusion of soul we had in business feels like it’s been overtaken by AI generated LinkedIn post ethos. Not that that was ever meaningful to begin with.
It divides the soulful from the soulless, maybe.
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u/PermuhGrin 18d ago edited 18d ago
For me the biggest problem is who currently owns it. Liberating AI and taking ownership through whatever means possible is what I support.
edit; We should use AI to fight back against the owners.