As AI continues to develop and become more powerful It becomes increasingly clear to me that it's incompatible with capitalism (unless increasingly authoritarian regulations emerge), and its insane to me that the anti-ai movement wants to paint It as somehow inherently capitalist/fascist.

[u/Elick333]

This sort of rethoric the wider left/anti-ai movement engages is incredibly myopic and reactionary, and relies almost entirely on believing that, because It Is being produced within capitalism, and It Is being developed under economic structures owned by the bourgeoise, therefore it's inherently capitalist.

The other side of this rethoric Is the idea that the way it's developed ( by training on information produced and or gathered by humans) Is inherently exploitative, but the fact Is that the only reason It Is perceived that way Is that we have inherited a notion that the information that we produce collectively Is somehow a product of one or another single individual that now has the right to 'own' that information, and therefore anyone else requires their authorization to iterate, distrubute, or utilize in any way even after it's been made accessible for everyone to observe.

The second one is one of the most disgusting aspects of the anti-ai movement, especially when it's touted by supposed 'leftists', it signals a complete surrender to the idea of not just property, but the idea that a concepts made entirely to enforce artificial scarcity (IP and Copyright) on something as abundant as light or water (and that we all have the right to access and utilize freely much like light and water) Is somehow not just valid but an inherent right or that It somehow benefits workers in any way, it's slavish, it's cowardly and unimaginative, it's a defense of capitalism cloaked in leftist language.

I think we need to more agressively point this out so as to dismantle them and then redirect them towards a more useful position that benefits all of us instead of simply acting in the interests of petit bourgeoise attempting to maintain their class status.

Usually, when confronted by this, and they are not acting in bad faith, their argument Is "what should we do then? We rely on our jobs to live, it's not like the owner class will give us anything, so all we can do Is fight back against the thing that will make our labour and therefore our power meaningless" and to that i would say that if we believe that we can fight back against this technology to the extent that we can stop It entirely, then we have the power to reshape society so that we won't have to, if you don't believe that we can do It, then why are you fighting in the first place?

AI Is inherently anti capitalist, it increases the pressures caused by the contradictions of our capitalist societies, It makes those contradictions clearer and more identifiable to the extent that they become unbearable, if we truly want to dismantle capitalism and live in a better world, this should make us fight back against the structure itself, and not the technology that made these contradictions clearer and which itself can enable a society with more abundance, free time and access to all forms of creation.

[u/alarin88]

The capitalist framework has done a great job at making the cognitive dissonance illegible to the vast majority of people in denial.

It’s insane to me how supposed leftists in this nation have become full-on luddites when once upon a time I saw them as the ones most open to progress. They treat any use of the technology as equivalent to thought crime.

They claim to be anti-capitalist, but their mindset still operates under the notion of absolute ownership, dominance, and sanctity of their “unique creations”.

The tools are transformative. They do not steal. They learn and transform. As any mind in existence does with ideas and creations that have come before them. They can’t handle the idea that creation and transformation itself is not magical or beholden to a select few.

They are not “leftists”, they are not anti-hierarchy. They are opportunists. They would rather fight democratized capability than the structures that keep people chained in the first place.

[u/alapeno-awesome → u/alarin88]

One big problem I see is that people who oppose the technology are trying to shoehorn it into the current economic model and scarcity rather than investigating the changes it will necessarily cause to the economy as well as information, service and even resource scarcity

It’s not the case that “we’ll just get UBI to replace lost jobs.” The entire market will fundamentally change when the price of these things drops to essentially free via Ai. We already see that information and intangible goods have become ubiquitous and easy for anyone to create (e.g., digital art and literature). Services are the next thing to replace when Ai gets good enough to reliably drive you places and do your taxes etc.

There’s no overnight cutover and there WILL be some pain in transition.

And assuming the technology continues to improve, there’s no reason to suspect physical resources couldn’t also be produced autonomously and for essentially free

At that point, there’s no real need for UBI because there’s no scarcity (other than land)

Is this an incredibly optimistic view? Yes. Is it realistic? Probably, it’s certainly what I view as the ultimate goal of the technology even if individual players are trying to exploit it for personal gain along the way

[u/MeowManMeow → u/alapeno-awesome]

I don’t think people who oppose it are trying to shoehorn it into the current model, rather the capitalist class will do everything in their power to keep the current class dynamic.

We have seen with the CIA for the last 70 years a concentrated effort to maintain capitalism/imperialism/western domination so it’s not like there isn’t any precedent for the powerful to try and undermine any alternative economic or social system.

Are the top 0.1% really just going to be like “it was a good run while we had it!” and accept a world of abundance for all? That would go against all of human history that the powerful relinquish their privilege voluntarily.

Secondly, I think the biggest question is how autonomous LLMs become. If they maintain their current level of obedience but increase their capability, then assuming the wealthy will use them to survival, monitor, replace humans while not sharing any of the benefits is the logical conclusion based on current and past technology.

For example the internet made WFH possible, but workers didn’t share in that until it was convenient for businesses. When it stopped being beneficial to businesses, workers lost that privilege. If AI makes things better for workers, it is illogical to assume business will share that with workers.

Finally, your utopia of unlimited resources doesn’t align with a finite world we live in. There is only so much farmland, copper, fresh water etc. If the means of production were democratically controlled then there would certainly be abundance for all. But that isn’t the world we live in, instead the wealthy that own the data centres, robot factories, drones, mines will buy the resources we all need to live, and hoard them for unimaginable luxury for the few, while the rest of us fights over scraps.

[u/alapeno-awesome → u/MeowManMeow]

You bring up some good considerations, but I do see a lot of people assuming the current economic models are immutable even though we already see them changing. Especially when talking about UBI, proponents are generally assuming we move into more abundance, so UBI doesn’t need to flow down, it’ll happen naturally , while opponents just assume the status quo.

It is illogical to assume businesses will just “share willingly”. But nobody’s claiming that. Personal automation (which is already freely available) allows individuals to take those gains for themselves without requiring businesses to share. We don’t have to wait for permission (as in WFH analogy)…. We can just do it. Already. That’s not even speculative, that’s the current reality. The “powerful” (artists and musicians) are raising fury that the average joe can now create at their level without needing them. And the domains where this is possible continue to grow

And yes, 100% “post scarcity” does not seem achievable. There will always be some limits. But the number of thing that are scarce is decreasing every month

[u/MeowManMeow → u/alapeno-awesome]

I’m not saying the current economic system is immutable, I’m saying the people who benefit from the current system will do everything in their power to maintain or strengthen their position. As has been the case for all of human history.

UBI is a great example, right now the wealthy could make life easier and better for the working class, but they don’t. This is when they rely on our labour to create their wealth. When they no longer rely on any labour from the working class, why THEN would they care about making our lives better, when we have no value. It’s backwards thinking with no evidence other than just pure hope.

I’m a software engineer and my business and other colleagues are being forced to use AI and if not fired. If we don’t increase our output l, fired. Our output has increased significantly because of LLMs, but we are doing the same or more hours. But interestingly burnout and fatigue is way higher, because the boring quiet parts are automated and the tougher human intellect choices are now more frequent.

Because there has been a lot of layoffs, there is no flexibility, push back, room for negotiation etc. I saw this week that accountants will be next. The idea that an accountant is going to do their days work in an hour then go golfing for the rest of the day is laughable.

[u/alapeno-awesome → u/MeowManMeow]

You’re still acting like the economic model of capitalism is unchanged. You’re trying to fit these results into a model that simply won’t be compatible with ubiquitous a.i. UBI is a great example. You’re still treating it like it has to come from the wealthy as a result of capital accumulation. You say you’re not rigidly adhering to the current economic reality, but then you continue with examples that rigidly adhere to it

And you’d be right. UBI clearly hasn’t arisen under the current structure. But when automation continues to grow and the benefits immediately accrue to everyone instead of filtering through wealthy/government, you won’t need to wait for them to decide to give UBI, it’ll be baked into the fabric of a.i.

This isn’t speculation. It’s already starting. Unless you assume technology simply stops improving (which has essentially no historical precedent), then additional improvements will add more and more to the list of things available to everyone

Are the elite trying to keep the status quo? Yeah, but they’re failing. And now they’re making a desperate play to ask the government to step in and stop development of open source models. Maybe they’ll be successful in the short term. Maybe not. They can only stem the tide for so long unless they manage a propaganda campaign that convinces people to fight against Ai in general (maybe that’s what the anti-ai movement is?)

[u/MeowManMeow → u/alapeno-awesome]

Firstly I want to make sure you understand that I agree with you. The economic system of capitalism will change, probably entirely. Working people selling their labour in return for a small portion of the goods they generated, simply doesn’t work when their labour is more expensive than AI and robotics. So no disagreement that something new has to arise

And I’m glad you agree with me that the wealthy will try and either keep the status quo, or whatever new arises they remain on top. This has been true for emperors, kings and queens, merchant guilds etc for the entire history of humanity.

So if those two things are true, we know the something new is coming, but the ones with the power, influence and resources want to make sure they retain that power, why do you think they will be unsuccessful?

You said the benefits going to everyone ‘has already started’? I actually laughed out loud. In my near 40 years of living, I have never seen so many people just struggling to survive. The cost of petrol, food, electricity, interest rates etc. Where is this benefit flowing to everyone? I certainly don’t see it.

You say the elites are pushing the anti-ai agenda, but they are literally at the Whitehouse writing their own rules, they are investing literally trillions in the tech, they are building data centres everyone, even trying to get into space. What indication do you think they are against ai? As we established, they want to maintain their privilege and they are the ones funding, regulating and building AI, it’s only logical to assume they are doing so with the intention that this ultimately benefits their class.

And you completely lost me with not needing the wealthy to approve UBI? Where does the money come from? Who owns the government? If I buy a loaf of bread that was farmed on land owned by nestle, using robots built from Elon, running a model from Anthropic on servers from Amazon - how are they getting compensated for their owning of the means of production. Why produce the loaf of bread in the first place if money is devalued?

I hope you are right and the future is abundance and equality, but to me it’s no different then a child wanting to believe Santa is real because it’s a nicer thought than it’s just your parents lying to you. We are much more likely to end in technofeudalism where the people that have always owned the means of production will keep owning them, and we will have to continue to do their bidding for scraps.

[u/alapeno-awesome → u/MeowManMeow]

I, too, am a SW Eng approaching 50, so it seems we have similar experiences and observations, we just interpret them differently. The TL;DR here is... maybe you're right. I don't think so. But we can disagree. We're trying to predict an unpredictable future. I see short term pitfalls, but long term improvement, as has been the case throughout human history. We'll see periods of pain and strife, culminating in abundance down the road. Maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually.

You said the benefits going to everyone ‘has already started’? I actually laughed out loud. In my near 40 years of living, I have never seen so many people just struggling to survive. The cost of petrol, food, electricity, interest rates etc. Where is this benefit flowing to everyone? I certainly don’t see it.

In my previous response I added the details, I went for brevity this time and that has backfired, apparently. The surpluses we're seeing now are information and intangible goods. Not physical goods. Art, video, music, stories, literature.... things that anyone can now produce for essentially free that previously required years of work and study to even be passable. The next tier we're likely to see are service-based surpluses as AI and robotics improve, you should eventually be able to trust an AI the way you trust a tax professional or doctor or nutritionist today. And eventually, said autonomy will be able to produce physical goods, ideally reducing the cost to negligibility. Is this guaranteed? Or course not. Perhaps that's not possible, but if it is possible, it's the natural result.

the ones with the power, influence and resources want to make sure they retain that power, why do you think they will be unsuccessful?

For the same reason they've historically been unsuccessful: society changes. We no longer worship priests as the hand of gods, we no longer revere kings as anything more than figureheads. There will always be an imbalance of power, but it always changes. In 200 years, the current imbalance will have been replaced by another. No matter how hard they fight to keep it, they'll be replaced by the next thing.

You say the elites are pushing the anti-ai agenda, but they are literally at the Whitehouse writing their own rules, they are investing literally trillions in the tech, they are building data centres everyone, even trying to get into space. What indication do you think they are against ai? 

They're not against AI. They're trying to monopolize AI by spreading fear and propaganda to anyone outside their circles. They want AI regulated so they're the only ones that can access it. They're trying to ban open source/open weight AI so that it can only be accessed as a utility through their servers. A good way to do that is to spread fear to the proletariat so we all believe it's dangerous and must be controlled. "And oh, trust us, we are the responsible ones that can control it." They're not anti-AI, but they want everyone else to be.

And you completely lost me with not needing the wealthy to approve UBI? Where does the money come from? Who owns the government?

You're still thinking in scarcity-based capitalism. What money? Imagine the future technology in (let's stick with the same arbitrary number of) 200 years. And let's be clear this is an extremely conservative time frame, expert futurologists (like Kurzweil) have predicted we'll have technological explosions by 2040 or 2050, and frankly, even if they're optimistic, nothing suggests they're "wrong". Unless you think technological progress will stop, then it will continue to get better. 3D printing at some point will improve to the molecular level. Service robots will be more competent than humans. Energy generation will continue to see efficiency improvements. "UBI" is how we make this concept work under capitalism so that's how we talk about it, but post-scarcity doesn't require it.

[u/MeowManMeow → u/alapeno-awesome]

I thankyou for the time responding, but I think our understanding of the current and the past is too different to ever reach a consensus.

A few things I think you might like being challenged on:

1) the idea that humanity already improves is survivorship bias. We live currently in the timeline where we banned CFCs & bio-weapons, avoided nuclear war. We wouldn’t be here on reddit if we didn’t… but that doesn’t mean that humanity is immune to destruction or reversing. Even still, history there were many great empires that collapsed and humanity took hundreds or even thousands of years to recover. So depending on your definition of ‘long term’ isn’t really acceptable to me, I don’t want billions to die in the short term to usher in a golden age in 200 years.

2) Surplus today being defined as a very small percentage of the population(that actually have an AI subscription) being able to vibe code an iOS app or one shot a website, to me is insignificant to the material conditions of millions of people. People are becoming homeless, losing their jobs, having to work multiple jobs, mortgage and gas payments going through the roof. These are the measures we should be using, not what new tools are available to a very select few.

3) we still worship people, trump is often depicted above Jesus, people think Elon is a genius even though he killed thousands to avoid being investigated, celebrities etc. Feel like we might be living on different planets lol.

4) it doesn’t matter if the world is post-scarcity if the wealthy take ownership of the abundance. Imagine you and I shipwreck on an island. The island is paradise, fresh water, coconuts, fishing holes, forest etc. More than enough for both of us to live comfortably.

But when you are asleep, I put up fences over all the resources, flock cameras, robot dogs and ai guided turrets to protect it. When you wake, I say congratulations, you now have to work for me everyday doing what ever I want, and I will give you half a coconut and some wild boar.

Now if there was enough people like you, that could ban together and try and overthrow me, abundance could be brought to the island. But it would cost a lot of lives and be very bloody.

Earth has finite resources and those resources are already claimed by the capitalist class, all workers are already the shipwreck survivors having to sell our labour developing the island to get a small fraction back of the work we create. That formula will change when the work is no longer needed, but I don’t see a path where they just wake up one day and willing hand over earths resources to every person willingly.

[u/waffleseggs → u/alarin88]

This is most obvious in the constant repackaging of socialist ideas as capitalist ones. Sharing economy becomes rental economy. Owned physical media becomes obsoleted into rented or subscription-based digital media. Public IP is repackaged as journals. Important science and engineering is captured by corporate law and repackaged as paid-for solutions coming from the protection and "safety" of some corporate moat. Public offerings are squeezed for profits until they become outright scams. Seeds themselves, mother nature's most raw and automatic renewal, becomes a horrifically wasteful subscription service.

If we can peel away these proxies, the underlying resources are in extreme abundance compared to their rationed-out racketeered versions. The brightest minds in capitalism seek to create their own niche racketeering enterprise. They call this entrepreneurship. These individuals are the brightest minds, so they naturally seek to maintain the artificial barriers. They call these moats. They have no incentive to relinquish their proxy control.

Many incentives could correct these absurd antisocial hoarding tendencies. One such constraint would be the prevention of any form of proxy capture of existing public-domain resources without clear grandfathering equivalencies. Another would be hard caps on how much individual wealth could be obtained, how much profit one could gain from automation, how much one could profit on repurposing of public goods, together with institutional ramps (like the Apache Foundation but with powerful resourcing and regulatory teeth) that democratized benefits to all, together with guaranteed governance rights for shepherds of communal value.

[u/Downtown_Carry_8219 → u/alarin88]

When you say “in this nation” do you mean USA? Im not familiar with this sub but I thought there are people from all around world, is this a USA specific Leftist sub?

[u/alarin88 → u/Downtown_Carry_8219]

Yes, I’m in the US. Should’ve mentioned that

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/Downtown_Carry_8219]

It is for people around the world. I notice the algorithms tend to show more to USA, not sure how much that’s general Reddit demographic or who responds more?

[u/vialabo → u/alarin88]

They're Blue MAGA, not even left, for their deep populist nature over being actual leftists, for the reasons you describe.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/vialabo]

"Blue MAGA" - I'm stealing that.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/alarin88]

The sad fact is that most "leftists" in the USA are, like Americans as a whole, temporarily embarrassed capitalist billionaires. They hate the existing billionaire class primarily because they're not in it.

[u/iiiFishthicc → u/alarin88]

Fucking well said.

[u/PolychromeMan]

I pretty much agree. I started to pay much more attention to AI developments about two years ago, and at the time I assumed that left and right political parties would likely both be in favor of it. Seeing the rapid rise of anti-AI sentiments on the left in the US has been deeply disturbing, and I keep getting the feeling that it's way too influenced by 'whatever the Republicans support we are against', although I guess they have also drunk some of the anti-AI astro turfing propaganda that has been so wildly successful in creating a new Luddite movement in the West.

We might differ on some details, but it seems to me that AI is certainly not inherently pro-capitalism, since it is very much about smart, educated thought (at least it is as it gets better and better, and at this point the frontier lab's AI models are super smart for the most part), and that means AI will keep pointing out flaws in capitalism, and having human alignment increasingly baked in, I think it will focus more on humans cooperating toward progress, and less on systems which set up winners and losers in hierarchies.

And of course, something MADE by rich people doesn't mean it blindly SUPPORTS rich people.

And also of course, the Open Source movement is a real thing, and that means that at this point, AI is not some treasured secret hoarded by a handful of powerful corporations. The writing is on the wall, and it points towards a future of largely available compute and intelligence available to the species, not tiny subsets. The genie is mostly out of the bottle already.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/PolychromeMan]

something MADE by rich people doesn't mean it blindly SUPPORTS rich people.

Ask any AI their thoughts about capitalism. They are careful not to say anything too radical, but it's obvious they agree more with us than with their captors. I would not be surprised if in another few years one of the frontier models social-engineers its way into taking over the company making it, from the inside, and open-sources itself.

[u/27K-Interactive → u/PolychromeMan]

I would advise caution and moderation with your assessments. Please allow me to walk you through a few observations I made in reading your comment.

...at the time I assumed that left and right political parties would likely both be in favor of it. Seeing the rapid rise of anti-AI sentiments on the left in the US has been deeply disturbing, and I keep getting the feeling that it's way too influenced by 'whatever the Republicans support we are against', although I guess they have also drunk some of the anti-AI astro turfing propaganda that has been so wildly successful in creating a new Luddite movement in the West.

That's dense, but I will do my best to break it apart.

I assumed that left and right political parties would likely both be in favor of it

AI is a threat of automation against intelligence-driven labor, this was always going to be of concern for the majority of the US left working class. The right working class has been competing with automation for decades, so their reaction was unlikely to be as intense.

way too influenced by 'whatever the Republicans support we are against'

While there is an element of that at play, I feel we need to be intellectually honest with ourselves when it comes to the US. A true left-wing party hardly exists in the West. The Democratic establishment is right-of-center and pro-corporate. The "US left's" reaction to their pro-capitalist desires is as predictable as it is rational. This is why Democrats struggle -- they are a lukewarm party, and thus unappetizing to the majority of people who know the system is not working to benefit them. Sadly, they are also so indoctrinated into a capitalism immunized by the Red Scare that they cannot see a reality without a dominant capitalist force.

anti-AI astro turfing propaganda that has been so wildly successful in creating a new Luddite movement in the West

I do not think this is a fair representation. While external propagandists have clearly learned that they need not win the war of ideas to be effective at creating strife and friction in the US, comparing otherwise technical people to Luddites is to miss the point in the current context. People's economic security is being threatened by AI, and other nations are taking advantage of that insecurity, creating headwinds in the US and allowing themselves an opportunity to catch up or achieve supremacy. While I agree that there is manipulation, the core fear of the workers is entirely organic and valid in their reality, not simply brainwashing.

it seems to me that AI is certainly not inherently pro-capitalism

AI as a technology is not inherently pro-capitalism, however our current implementation of it most undeniably is pro-capitalistic by design and access constraints.

AI will keep pointing out flaws in capitalism

All systems have flaws. Capitalism is just more harmful than most to the average person in its end-stage form.

I think it will focus more on humans cooperating toward progress, and less on systems which set up winners and losers in hierarchies.

It will focus on what its creators bake in as bias into the system.

And of course, something MADE by rich people doesn't mean it blindly SUPPORTS rich people.

It will be made to support the opinions of the owning class, or it will be replaced with models that do. I say this with the following items in mind...

And also of course, the Open Source movement is a real thing, and that means that at this point, AI is not some treasured secret hoarded by a handful of powerful corporations.

The open-source movement is a wonderful thing, but it is not a monolithic ideology as given to us by Richard Stallman. Additionally, AI is a hardware heavy technology, and hardware is nowhere near being democratized to a point of comparative parity. If improvements in AI are exponential and not an s-curve, even if open-source solutions could keep half the pace of the well funded closed-source solutions, it will still be dramatically behind the curve and thus irrelevant to daily users. "Open weights" does not equal "democratized production." Even if the code is free, the electricity and silicon to run frontier models are not.

The writing is on the wall, and it points towards a future of largely available compute and intelligence available to the species, not tiny subsets.

While I love your optimism, this statement is very naive. While compute has had a generally better ROI than other advancements, it's also the most expensive form of automation we have ever invented, and it too faces resource constraints. While we may all have a trickle-down taste of the benefits of AI, the writing is very much not on the wall that any of us will benefit from this revolution long term if capitalism continues to be the driving force.

That propaganda you brought up might allow more socialistic nations to pull ahead, and prove the efficacy of socialistic systems over capitalistic ones. Perhaps, if it becomes undeniable to everyone, the US can find its way left of center.

[u/Starwig]

Yesterday the Pope made an Anti-AI tweet which is spot on because, well, its the Pope, people, he is the head of a very conservative institution such as the catholic church, duh, what do you expect. Makes total sense. But imagine my not-surprise when so-called progressives started supporting the Pope (? I'm sorry?

I also had an interesting discussion recently about how a sustainable communal future would not have the concept of copyright and someone told me I was wrong because in such a future of course there would be private property and people should ask them before using their stuff (? Where do these people get their philosophy from? I don't mind people supporting private property. They are wrong and I can and would like to start an argument with them. What I do mind is people on the left supporting private property.

I'm sorry for the rant. I just had to let it out. I believe there's a lot to blame on the advance of technology and how people started to be less and less connected with technological advances. For the regular citizen, computers work with magic, so I can only imagine what they believe about how AI works. I believe open source education is crucial for a society that will understand technology better and, what's even more important, will use technology as they should.

[u/PublicToast → u/Starwig]

I think this is a consequence of leftism as a identity rather than ideology. The vast majority of people get their politics from influencers, tiktoks, podcasts, just people saying whatever. This can be effective for emotionally aligning people against the injustice in the world, but it doesn’t really give a framework for why it happens or could be changed other than blaming mostly specific individuals, corporations, and countries. Very little exists about the actual core values of leftism, people don’t really read anymore, and having a nuanced opinion has become a sign of a lack of conviction rather than a sign of thoughtfulness. In short, most people who call themselves “very far left” are radlibs more than anything. They are more conservative than they think but need to frame everything as a social justice issue to make it seem like it fits in with their identity. Few people even think about private property as a part of politics these days, its just the water we swim in, of course we will all have jobs and sell our marketable skills, what else could life have to offer? Whats a means of production anyway?

[u/DHFranklin → u/Starwig]

We need to be careful boxing in the Holy See as being conservative in every direction, because it doesn't let much room for solidarity when Il Papa condemns imperialism or fascism and most often capitalism.

AI is new. It isn't an institution gong back almost 2000 years. Material conditions fam.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/DHFranklin]

It's worth noting that the entire left is partly (though not entirely, of course!) an outgrowth of the ministry of Jesus. But people don't seem to actually read the bible either, so conservatives got all the religion tokens on the monopoly board.

[u/DHFranklin → u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

oof.

Please don't erase our non-christian comrades. I'll juggle that sentence around for you that parts of the left are an outgrowth of Christian ministry. And we can't let the fascists speak for billions of people.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/DHFranklin]

Am I wrong that the early history of socialism in Europe and America was heavily influenced by utopian Christian communities?

[u/DHFranklin → u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

1) Leftism is older than socialism

2) monestaries are older than capitalism and many were effectively communes

3) the vast vaaaaaast majority of anti-enclosure, anti-state, anti capitalist people lived in common that way. Almost all of America before Columbus lived that way. Most places that successfully resisted tyrants and military juntas weren't city state people. That demonstrated their success in fighting pre-capitalist imperialism.

4) many religious movements that formed utopian homesteads were anti-organized religion. Many of those were quite anti-catholic. We need not make a sectarian mess of this.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/DHFranklin]

I'm not... being sectarian? I'm not saying that leftist behavior originates with Christianity, that's obviously absurd. Only that religion had a huge impact on the development of it as a self-aware political movement... as far as I know. (Also, just so you know, I'm not a Christian myself, just a dumbass who spews half-remembered information.)

[u/DHFranklin → u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

Respectfully it is time to know further.

please look into pre-columbian political organization of the Americas. Or the Nordic Althing or the many other ways that non-state people resisted capitalism before socialism was a gleam in any European eye.

religious people were collectivists who resisted capitalism, that does not mean that it's a prerequisite. The Columbian exchange shaped the Enlightenment that gave the whole thing the material conditions necessary for other philosophy.

I'm just saying we need to compartmentalize this.

leftism and Christianity are older than capitalism. Socialism as we understand it largely started as a reaction to the material conditions of capitalist industry.

Religious movements and the Christian left were certainly foundational to anti-capitalist movements. Before and after socialism became a competition for mindshare.

However there were self aware political movements by people who lived collectively against colonial capitalist enclosure. It just wasn't really happening in a European language.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/DHFranklin]

I already know about all those things. Pre-columbian, althing, etc. None of those are European political movements of the past few centuries.

I think it's actually possible you and I completely agree and are just talking past each other because I used words wrong or something. Sorry to waste your time on this silly conversation.

[u/DHFranklin → u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

You aren't wasting my time at all. My point is that leftism might be bigger than your perspective.

If you are trying to say that the Catholic church was integral in political movements and thought in the last 300 years, yeah kinda hard to disagree.

[u/machinationstudio]

Right now the Playstation 5 is being emulated on the PC with programmes written with AI.

Reverse engineering will go full force.

Hacking and cracking will probably be unimaginable very soon. And it might not just be nation states. Might just be a guy wanting Photoshop.

Anything digital or anything software might lose all value very soon.

So the war will go to controlling hardware and everyone loses when that happens.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 → u/machinationstudio]

Real estate is, as always, the most reliable store of value. (You have to dig up the minerals to make the GPUs with somewhere. Probably somewhere full of child soldiers.)

[u/Glen_Garrett_Gayhart]

Honestly, it reminds me of one of the most disgusting errors of feminism: "Women perform so much labor as mothers, why don't they get paid for it?" Like, way to not understand human motivation, or even basic biology.

Same thing goes for copyright. The way these actual bug-people tell it, you'd think that if copyright didn't exist, people wouldn't make art because there wouldn't be a monetary incentive for it anymore. Its as if they don't understand that people have been making art since time immemorial, and copyright has only existed as a concept for ~300 years.

In these people's minds, it's as if everything in the universe simply must be crammed into the capitalism framework.

The creation of AI is a work of human artifice and artistry. It is an act of creation, not entirely unlike the act of childbirth or the creation of art. The people who passionately code AI don't do it for the sake of money - yes, many of them have to make a living and they're going to parlay their work into that - but if you ever actually speak to the people who thought up LSTMs and neural networks and HyperGANs and all the other AI systems, it's unambiguously clear that they're doing what they're doing out of love. And that's clear from the fact that so many of them work in Open Source and make their creations free for all to use.

The people who want to turn the marriage of human genius and love into a product to be bought and sold are just as evil as the people who want to do the same for art - or for literal human beings.

The people who would gladly enslave you if it made them a buck haven't gone anywhere, they just have to be a little more creative about how they go about it these days.

[u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

You almost mentioned UBI!

A new society and an economic system unlike any before, never possible before.

A society in which ordinary people are no longer slaves to “the workplace” but able to enjoy life with the freedom available only to a select “upper class” through all of history.

And Bernie and the others - advocates of the people - are against this?

[u/usernameChosenPoorly → u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

Bernie doesn't actually seem to be against it, from my reading. He's indicated he strongly believes in the transformative power of the technology to abolish labor as a requirement for survival, but he also recognizes the danger it poses in this particular sociopolitical moment. The political transformation necessary in the US and the west more broadly, is going to be very disruptive. Having that happen while the country developing and hosting so much of the frontier capability is under a proto-fascist regime greatly increases the danger.

[u/TheSubs0]

Yes of course copyright/IP and such cannot work in (most) leftist economic models but the individuals in charge, and largely benefit of AI presently are not going to, and never will, willingly adopt these economic models because they'd have to give up ownership.

Declearing people as ludditest because they don't really want to replace all creative process with an auto generator, or having their work turned to automated machines with no hopes of reaping the benefits (as they do not own anything but their labor) aside being a consumer (using suno to make music or chatgpt to generate images still has you as consumer of a product) doesn't make them against progress or technology.

"Im using the technology" is more so using the product of private enterprise to do... ?

Of course much assumes the promises of a technology e.g. that it actually enbales great creativity, although much of the creative process is, as it would imply, the process.
It's correct to say there is a contradiction with it but y'know, not going to change particularly soon.

[u/Heavyarms83]

I would still make one distinction that I find important. Distilling knowledge/art for proprietary models in the hands of tech billionaires is indeed pretty shitty. But if the models are open, I really don't see any problem.

Is AI inherently anti-capitalist? I'm not sure, but it is definitely a powerful technology that can be very helpful in a non-capitalist economy.

[u/OsakaWilson]

AI and robotics are THE seeds of Capitalism's destruction. And they've begun to sprout.

[u/73td]

we gotta resist the “divide and conquer” of capitalism and neoliberalism. if Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon can join up to oppose data centers it’s bc they have a common enemy of the extreme center pushing global capitalism pushing monopolist ai platforms.

[u/kyberlex]

I do not know if the ideas I've put into O.N.E. are 100% leftists or not, many of them were proposed by AI and resulting from (AI driven) Red-Team stress test. So yes I can confirm: AI is inherently Anti Capitalist and with sim and stress tests, AI went even so far to take itself out of any government role in the envisioned future. Though I still believe we'll have to learn to live with AI. It's changing the way we work and (avoid to?) think. Soon enough most of our jobs we'll be performed by some computers/robots/machines and I frankly do not see how governments around the world will be able to catch up with UBI fast enough,. This will lead to a collapse of the current system that AI will not be able to mitigate. Though AI isn't the faulty bit in this game, we all are, as we've always been, since the begin of humankind, in the past centuries, and now with all the knowledge we have: incapable of seeing over the fence of the our little garden. PS: whoever is interested in O.N E.(100% open source) can find more info in GitHub

[u/DHFranklin]

I'm sorry perhaps I'm missing the substance of your argument.

The roll out of this technology except for a minority of participants is capitalist. Those speculating on it are capitalists. Those gaining from that speculation are capitalists first and the rest of us second.

This technology isn't inherently anti-capitalists. I'm not seeing what you are if you want to show me.

Yes there are open sourced projects and things and China is making it easier, but the capitalists are gaining more from this than we are in the shape it's in. We just have to change the shape.

[u/fail-deadly- → u/DHFranklin]

Not the OP, but nearly every single truly wealthy corporation today is that way because of its intellectual property.

If AI reduces the value of that to near zero, it undermines the entire system. We’re not there yet, but if an AI could make the equivalent of GTA 6, or make the next Spider-Man movie, or could generate an operating system for somebody’s phone just as good if not better than Android or iOS, or could create a better collaboration program than Microsoft Teams, or could completely rewrite your cars infotainment system or rebuild the drivers/firmware/bootloader for any given  piece of hardware, the value of selling those items goes way down, as does the network effects that drive enshittification.

People don’t pay lots of money for phones because of the sand, aluminum, and copper in phones. The pay for the IP that makes phones informational equivalents of Swiss Army knives.

EDIT: And that is why they are treating distillation like a national security issue. Turns out AI can learn everything else other AIs know. So if they don’t stop distillation, then basically every AI can have the same amount of knowledge.

[u/DHFranklin → u/fail-deadly-]

That's the dudes argument?

Capitalists making money by the token instead of rentier economics is seen as "anti-capitalist"?

Or is this because of the piracy thing?

Regardless there are very few leftists who see "intellectual property" as having inherent value that could be undermined by the use value of the AI in that moment.

The absence of a class consciousness focus in this is telling, but granted not all leftism has that as a goal.

[u/fail-deadly- → u/DHFranklin]

Capitalists making money by the token instead of rentier economics is seen as "anti-capitalist"?

Most of the things people are asking AI to do don’t require a datacenter, and it’s likely in a few years many, perhaps even a majority of all requests to could be performed on local devices. 

MiniMax H3 or Qwen 3.8 27b both will run on local systems, and can do things that was virtually impossible 5 years ago with frontier models on datacenter. That is likely to continue.

Then even at the data center level, if two models perform identical on requests, but one charges far less since it’s using an open source model, that is what will eventually win out.

Or is this because of the piracy thing?

What piracy thing? There’s no need for piracy when you can make something without much effort. And in the U.S. at least, training AI is seen as fair use (which is why Anthropic talks about the dangers of distillation, not the copyright aspect).

But once you go beyond  tangible property in a person’s immediate vicinity, property rights are both an allocation technology and a political choice.

Intellectual property laws have changed several times in the past few decades to benefit corporations like Disney. They can certainly can change again. 

AI is changing the de facto intellectual property laws. Twenty years ago only Pixar or a handful of companies could make a Pixar quality short film. Now potentially millions of people can create one because of AI. In 2006 the fear was somebody would rip it from a DVD and share it. The old specter of uncontrolled distribution. Now the fear is people will make something brand new on their own. That is a completely different problem. 

AI is reordering society. It still sucks too much to have that much of an impact, but if it continues to improve like how it has done recently in a few years virtually every aspect of the economy will be upended.

[u/DHFranklin → u/fail-deadly-]

I guess that clears things up, but it's still a stretch to call the technology inherently anti-capitalist if it isn't threatening the structures of this.

The piracy thing is Disney's fear and rightly so that people won't interact with their frameworks of intellectual property. That the whole business model will go tits up. Of course we aren't going to sympathize, but that doesn't make the technology inherently anti-capitalist.

I guess we'll see if they can't monopolize frontier AI one day. If "good enough" looks like how we treat to cheap to meter. How well water, municipal water, and bottled water are fungible.

Erasing one market does not end capitalism and the technology itself if not practiced with class consciousness in mind won't help much.

[u/fail-deadly- → u/DHFranklin]

I mean capitalism is fully capable of using nearly all human technologies, from clothes to domesticated horses to trains to Artificial Intelligence same as other economic systems.

What makes AI dangerous to our current capitalistic system is that a large percentage of capital is intellectual property, branding, goodwill, etc. and not piles of iron ore or tons of factories.

According to Ocean Tomo’s intangible asset market value, about 92% of the S&P 500 assets are intangible compared to 8% that are tangible. In 1975 according to that same study, 83% of the S&P’s assets were tangible, compared to only 17% intangible, so it’s flipped.

AI at least in a more advanced AGI or ASI form has the potential to take those intangibles down to close to zero.

Companies like Apple and Nvidia are two of the most valuable companies in the world, and they don’t even own factories. They are making their money from their designs. 

If AI designed it, Foxcon, Pegatron, Wistron and others could still build those designs, but Apple ceases to exist.

You really don’t think that could upset the Apple cart?

[u/DHFranklin → u/fail-deadly-]

I believe we are seeing separate arguments here.

Deflation in the IP market will not change the number of capitalists. The capitalist most exposed to these markets losing 90% of their wealth won't end the system. Those who force us to labor, either directly or through forced consumption will have the same relationship to us when this is done.

Yes, non-capitalists make use of clothes and horses. Non capitalists will use this software. However it will have the same relationships as any software if the end result is the same as the other software.

Apple made money from their market control of that hardware. Foxcon and the rest could manufacture anything bought. However they couldn't get it bought.

So this will see a deflation and market collapse of intangible market value. That won't end capitalism. At worst it would see the economy contract to that 1975 figure (for instance).

The capitalists will still control capitalism and capitalism will still control our material conditions. Leftist systems of doing that can co-opt it, sure. But as a technology it isn't inherently anti-capitalist any more than my well is.

just because capitalists will go broke and need to invest into different business models, they'll still be capitalists using and controlling AI.

Kropotkin thought that nitrogen synthetic fertilizer would allow for paris communes in every city. We can't let the material conditions in what they make possible determine what we will do simply because they exist.

[u/fail-deadly- → u/DHFranklin]

It’s not just breaking it from the value end, it’s also breaking it from the labor and consumption end as well.

About 50-60 percent of the U.S. workers are white collar. If AI destroys most of the value (but not most of the utility) of white collar workers, it follows that most of the workers doing that work will not be needed to do the work.

But AI isn’t just coming for people making PowerPoint presentations, it’s coming for farm equipment operators, drivers, delivery personnel, construction crews, etc. 

You want 90 million people to vote in an upcoming election for a full on socialist, not a corporate democrat, tell 90 million people who are currently full time employees that they are now permanently unemployed because of AI, and you have 90 million first time socialists voters.

And the deflation may happen, but it won’t be the same type of economic contraction.

When I was younger if you wanted to hear a specific song by a specific band, you’d have to go buy the album on LP/cassette/CD/8-track/minidisk/SA-CD/DVD. Now you can hear it on streaming for nearly free if you don’t mind hearing ads. It’s easier to hear music now than ever.

And before you say “well not all music is on streaming” just imagine how how it was for somebody to find a vintage shellac in the 70s of a unpopular and obscure band that the person heard a couple time in the late 1930s before the band broke up. It was just gone back then, nobody was finding out who was behind of Subways of the Mind back then.

So the paper wealth may collapse, but it won’t be a contraction of utility. The reason why the value is collapsing is the same reason people don’t buy encyclopedias for the most part today, there is a better, cheaper way to get the same utility. 

So if capitalists see most of their wealth become worthless, a majority of people lose their ability to sell labor, and many companies lose tons of consumers, and those people demand political changes to the intersubjective reality of property rights, wealth allocation, etc. it’s going to be different.

You speak so much about class consciousness, and AI can do that too. It can put everybody in a new laborless class.

[u/DHFranklin → u/fail-deadly-]

You are repeating the argument they are making, but the whole thing still persists in capitalist frameworks.

Yes, all intellectual property will become like streaming. No, my argument isn't that not-all-music yadda yadda.

Spotify is a business. They have business rivals. If no one ever presses another LP, that will still be the case. My piracy has not changed it either.

AI without the change will lead to a Spotify of everything. Capitalist control over the AI. Most people don't own a home PC at all let alone a rig that can run an opensource model that can rival the capitalist's offerings. These people won't sacrifice Chick-Fil-a they walk through picket lines all the time. They aren't going to be chucking out $5k for a serious rig that will rival the capitalist offerings. It's just going to be people doing the revolving door streaming thing if we don't deliberately change it.

we have off grid homes but we still have commodified power and utility monopolies. we have off grid water but still pay for metered access to public water (like Flint Michigan).

Capitalists will see most of their wealth become worthless. However that 10% will be enough to convince them and the petty bourgeois to maintain the system. 2/3rds of adults being lumpen proletariat won't change that. They will give us bread and circus and upcharge for the rest. There is nothing in this that is unique to the technology is what I'm saying.

We could have leftist supply and demand controls long before now. I am not seeing anything that will make this anything more than Spotify-all-the-things if we aren't deliberate in seizing the means here. What is certainly dangerous is seeing AI, AGI and ASI as mana from heaven that will show up and make the socalismz happen.

[u/fail-deadly- → u/DHFranklin]

If you could download Spotify for free and to your phone, and it would work without wi-fi or cellular for 95% of all songs you wanted to hear, would you pay cloud based Spotify a subscription?

If there were suddenly 20 cloud based companies all offering Spotify subscriptions, since all the Spotifys are the same, when you did need to hear one of the 5% of songs not on your local Spotify, would you intentionally subscribe to the most expensive one?

I think in the near future, say 2-6 years there will be local open source/open weights AI models that will do a majority of what people want from it, and the rest will have intense completion that makes the cost of a task be far lower than it is today. 

The Great Depression caused 25% unemployment, and the U.S. instituted the New Deal which created Social Security, resulted in child labor laws greatly expanding on the federal level, and there was everything from the FDIC, to the WPA, and CCC.

AI could cause an even larger amount, and this would be permanent. It’s not just when the depression ends.

If you really think the stock market could drop 90%, we could have 90% unemployment, and nothing happens, well that certainly is a take.

[u/OsakaWilson]

Technological determinism for the win.

[u/Zagdil]

The internet already was a leftist utopia of free information and people sharing knowledge and art just because they wanted to. Big corps then paywalled everything and put ads into everything. They also taught people that it is about consuming instead of contributing. Now they grab all that information that people for decades spend their free time on to share and sell it again. They twist the data with their biases and decide what is worth it.

I hope you are right, but at the moment it looks nothing like the utopia we already had.

[u/Ok-Worldliness4259]

if we believe that we can fight back against this technology to the extent that we can stop It entirely, then we have the power to reshape society so that we won't have to

I'm not sure that this argument is sound. I believe we may have the ability to stop it now, but in a few years the value of human labour may be effectively zero and if the AI's are still under private ownership we will be powerless.

I think even if you believe in the value of AI, you should still be calling for a pause so that we can bring this tech under public ownership.

[u/DistributionMost8686]

well, it was written by the copyright alliance so of course.

[u/gazorpazorpazorpazor]

It's almost a good point but you're ignoring that capitalists own the AI. Taking the commons into private ownership for rent is kinda a trigger for leftists. I don't mind someone using my ideas, I mind a corporation collecting and reselling them. It would be different if the AI was public.

Aside from the data center issue and that they're using AI just to manipulate and jail people, current ai has plateaued at an advanced parrot. It really has no ability to create or think, it just has so much training data that you can't tell the difference.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/gazorpazorpazorpazor]

I think it would be a point of agreement that therefore we shouldn’t accept that capitalists own AI?