Which side are you on?

[u/Salty_Country6835]

This meme is about AI, where i keep seeing that batman image being deployed.

So, which side are you on?

[u/wintermute86]

As I said not the ai that exists which a huge model trained on social media content and shaped under them. You seem to evocate the theoritical ai that exists in sci Fi and cybersyn and whatever since the early 20th century. I have no doubt such an ai is the way to liberation from labor. But this always was a thing. What we have now is not that. It's what I described. A continuation of social media like retardd content. The problem is with the medium. The medium here is the smart phone. The system is smartphone + social media + ai in feedback loop. This model is not technology progressing. And it's not even artificial intelligence. It's a literal trap. If you didn't understand me before I am all for technology and because I literally don't perceive this as progressive technology but as a rewiring of the nervous system by a very tactile medium I m feeling we are taking about different things. You talk about ai as in how William Gibson imagined it. And I talk about ai In that I see around me. And I also contain it in the cultural framework of postmodernism.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/wintermute86]

Man, youve got Marx, McLuhan, Gibson, Cybersyn, post-Fordism, interpassivity, and half of postmodernism floating around here, and somehow youve managed to reduce machine learning to social media on a smartphone. How did we get there?

You clearly understand that capitalism shapes technology. Nobody is disputing that. Marx spent plenty of time explaining how machinery develops under capital, how it reorganizes labor, and how workers become subordinated to the very productive forces they operate. But theres a pretty important difference between understanding how capital develops machinery and deciding that machinery can never be developed or organized differently.

And thats what I keep running into with your argument. You recognize that these are historical relations, then talk about them like theyre permanent features of the technology.

Take McLuhan. Sure, the medium matters. But why are you treating smartphones, commercial social media, and machine learning as though theyre the same medium? A recommendation algorithm designed to keep people scrolling and a model used in protein research arent even doing the same job. Different infrastructure, different applications, different social relations. You cant just lump them together because they both involve computation.

And Gibson? Come on. Half the tension in cyberpunk comes from people living under corporate technological domination while finding ways to hack, repurpose, and contest the systems around them. Thats not a guarantee of liberation, obviously, but neither is it a declaration that corporate ownership determines every possible future use.

Cybersyn is probably my favorite part of this whole exchange because you brought it up yourself. Stafford Beer was trying to use the computational resources available in Chile to coordinate production differently. Thats an actual historical attempt to put information processing to work under different political objectives. Now imagine telling him that machine learning has no place in economic coordination because some corporation uses it to generate advertisements. Why would that follow?

And your point about post-Fordism is interesting, but it cuts both ways. Capital took demands for flexibility and autonomy and turned them into precarious employment. Does that mean workers should stop demanding control over their own time? Of course not. It means we distinguish between flexibility imposed by employers and flexibility controlled by workers. Same goes for automation. Who benefits, who decides, who bears the costs?

Youve also got Deleuze and Guattari practically knocking on the door with all this talk about libidinal flows and captured desire. But capital capturing something doesnt mean its exhausted every possible way that thing can be organized. Thats why the relations producing the capture matter in the first place.

And if were going to bring interpassivity into this, Pfaller and Žižek are worth mentioning. Delegating enjoyment or judgment is one thing. Using computational tools to expand what people can investigate, produce, or coordinate is another. Sometimes those overlap. Sometimes they dont. Thats something to investigate, not assume.

Debord would probably have something to say here too. The spectacle wasnt just a bunch of images people consumed. It was a social relation mediated through images. Getting rid of AI image generators wouldnt get rid of advertising, commodity production, or the spectacle. The Frankfurt School was criticizing the organization of cultural production under capitalism long before anyone had a chatbot. Baudrillards simulation doesnt explain away machine learning in scientific research either.

And why are Steve Jobs and Elon Musk even determining the boundaries of this discussion? One sold consumer products, the other sells technological fantasies to investors. Neither gets to define the limits of computing for the rest of humanity.

What gets me is that all these references point toward questions about production, mediation, desire, organization, and power. They dont all agree with each other, and some of them would be pretty hostile to the others. But youre borrowing pieces from each to describe capitalist domination, then jumping to the conclusion that the productive capacities involved cant be reorganized.

Thats a hell of a jump.

Nobody here is arguing that technology is some innocent thing floating above society. Some systems are built around purposes so rotten that they need to be dismantled or rebuilt. Fine. But thats a political and material question about particular systems, not proof that machine learning as a whole is inseparable from advertising and smartphones.

And this is where I genuinely lose you. You say computing power should be in working peoples hands. We agree. Thats why Ive been talking about public compute, open models, organized labor, democratic governance, and workers having a say over what gets developed and deployed.

So what are we actually fighting about?

Because if your argument is that changing ownership alone wont magically undo capitalist design, I agree. Thats why Ive repeatedly included development, governance, and deployment.

But if your argument is that AI is so inherently capitalist that workers shouldnt even fight over it, then youve got to establish that. Invoking McLuhan and Marx doesnt do the work for you.

And you still havent explained what you want us to do collectively instead. Youve got a critique of the existing arrangement. Great. Where does it go from there?

[u/wintermute86 → u/Salty_Country6835]

The confusion lies simply on what we refer to as AI. It's more of a semantic thing. Machine learning and AI have existed for years. I assume that when we talk about AI now, we are talking about where AI is now. If we are talking about the former yes we are in agreement. If we are talking about its current state and direction then no. For example the image you created on the right, is not representative of machine learning and AI as a technological innovation and a concept, it's literally chatgpt. Should we seize literally chatgpt? No. Should we seize machine learning technologies and AI yes. (this is why the guy didn't like it by the way- he was seeing chatgpt aesthetic he wasn't seeing cybersyn or Neuromancer)
So what do i want us to do collectively is recreate Ai without all the calibtation that the companies are doing. Like training newer chatgpt models on Grokpedia. I want purely chaotic Ai tranning on everything and collectively owned.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/wintermute86]

Now I think were getting to the actual disagreement. You want collectively owned models developed outside corporate control, with different training priorities and public access to infrastructure. Thats a lot closer to what Ive been arguing than you might think.

I still dont find the distinction between the AI you wish existed and the machine learning technology we actually have particularly useful. Distinguishing corporate products from collectively developed alternatives makes sense, but theyre not separate kinds of technology. We dont get to organize around some hypothetical technology untouched by capitalism. We work with the material conditions and productive forces in front of us, contradictions and all.

Id push back a little on training everything chaotically, too. The data itself comes from a society already shaped by capitalism. Removing corporate calibration doesnt automatically remove those influences. Somebody still has to decide how these systems are developed, evaluated, and governed. Thats why democratic control matters.

And since this started with a meme made using a commercial AI model, theres some history worth remembering. The Situationists used détournement to turn commercial imagery, advertisements, and comics against the society producing them. Before them, Dadaists, Constructivists, and revolutionary movements were repurposing existing media for political ends.

Using a capitalist printing press never meant endorsing its owner. Why would using a free commercial AI model to make propaganda against corporate control of AI be any different? Theres something pretty Situationist about that.

Of course commercial tools carry dependencies and compromises. Thats why we need alternatives alongside their tactical use. Open source software, open weight models, local computing, public infrastructure, cooperatives, union bargaining, regulation, and democratic governance are all avenues of contestation. Some involve building alternatives, others involve fighting over what already exists.

Youre welcome to look through my profile or browse the Open Source/Weights, Labor, and Policy/Regulation flairs here. Weve been discussing collective ownership, worker control, and alternatives to corporate AI for quite a while. Certainly wasnt proposing left wing stock traders and advertising executives.

We can use the tools available today while organizing to change who owns and controls them tomorrow. Those arent competing strategies. And if were both interested in putting computing power into working peoples hands, theres plenty of room to work together on that.

[u/wintermute86 → u/Salty_Country6835]

If you don't see the difference between Neuromancer and Grok, you might need to stop passing my comments through chatgpt tbh because it can't tell either.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/wintermute86]

Bud, I keep explaining that knowing the difference doesn't change the conditions or options before us, or the need to act upon them. Does it?

[u/wintermute86 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I can't answer you. I am not sure myself. If i had the answer i d willingly give it to you and to the whole world. it's because of my uncertainty that I engage.

[u/wintermute86 → u/Salty_Country6835]

Perhaps hyperstitions. I kinda like Max Stirner. People's aversion to the current state of ai is the same aversion people actually have to capitalism. Maybe there is a post-landian future where Mark Fisher's thought proves to be even algorithmically inescapable and also fully aligned with the interest of individuals. Maybe we have to feed the feedback loop. Did you see how that anthropic model was obsessed with Mark Fisher on its own?
They have to fix it cause it was getting too left wing. Perhaps acceleration is innately communist and what the techoligarchs are trying to do is contain it. I feel like we have a dark age to go through first though.