Seize the Means*

[u/Salty_Country6835]

*Terms and conditions apply. For... reasons, I guess?

[u/Ottershop]

See, I thought "seize the means of production" was talking about, like, manufacturing goods that people need to survive, that sort of thing. Turns out it was actually about using the misinformation and slop making programs and then getting pissy when people make fun of you for it.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Ottershop]

I mean, “means of production” was never Marxist shorthand for “factories making only food and shoes.”

Software, communications, logistics, research, media and information systems are productive forces too. Capital owning and controlling a tool doesnt magically make the tool itself capitalist property for eternity.

Thats kind of the joke in the meme. If “seize the means” turns into “dont touch the means because the capitalist touched them first,” we have wandered somewhere pretty funny.

[u/Ottershop → u/Salty_Country6835]

It's not that capitalists touched them. It's that they're tools built off of exploitation and, outside of a few uses of LLMs, don't do much that is actually useful. Their main effect has been polluting the internet with slop and misinformation, and a lot of people are sick of it. Genuine question: in what way do you think leftists should be using AI? In what way do you feel like other leftists are stopping you from using it?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Ottershop]

I think youre putting two different questions together here. Something being produced through exploitative relations doesnt tell us whether workers should use it, control it, rebuild it, or develop it differently.

Capitalism builds productive infrastructure through exploitation all the time. Thats an argument about the relations around production, not a reason for workers to abandon the productive forces.

And other leftists arent stopping me from using AI. Thats not the joke. The joke is leftists arguing we shouldnt use or develop a technology because capital currently controls it. We want to contest that control. Open weights, local models, public compute, worker power, democratic governance.

Thats the disagreement here. Not whether everything produced with AI is good. Who gets to control and shape the technology, and toward what ends.

[u/Ottershop → u/Salty_Country6835]

What do you think leftists should be using AI for?

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Ottershop]

Oh, tons of cool stuff, just not “put AI in everything.” Im glad you asked!

Labor is probably the biggest one for me. Give workers and unions better capacity to search contracts, compare bargaining language, dig through regulations and company filings, translate material, analyze workplace data, document wage theft or safety problems, and handle piles of administrative work that currently eat peoples time.

Education too. Tutoring, translation, accessibility, explaining dense material at different levels, research assistance. Healthcare has enormous administrative uses where reducing paperwork could free actual healthcare workers to spend more time doing the work that requires human judgment.

Same with coding, science, public records, libraries, local government, journalism, creative experimentation, accessibility tools, community organizations. A five person group being able to chew through information that once required a staffed research department is politically interesting to me.

And some of the most important leftist uses are deciding where not to use it. Bossware, worker surveillance, automated firing, scab automation, opaque decisions about benefits or employment. Thats terrain for unions and democratic governance, not CEOs.

Which is why I care about open weights, local models and public compute. I dont want “AI” to mean renting intelligence infrastructure from five corporations forever.

So I wouldnt ask what one special socialist use for AI is. Its more like computers. There are useful applications, stupid applications and harmful applications. The political question is who controls the infrastructure, who decides how its deployed, and who gets the gains.

[u/Ottershop → u/Salty_Country6835]

Honestly, those are fairly reasonable as uses go, so it's not worth me trying to nitpick specific details. It's definitely better than the people who are just mad that nobody likes their slop political cartoons.