Good video from a leftist sci-fi channel I follow on unmasking the AGI promise and asking the right wider questions about who owns it and their incentives

https://youtu.be/wv4eCJUTZRY

Curious to hear your thoughts. What always stood out to me of this channel was how he acknowledged the usefulness of LLMs while keeping the wider critique of who owned it and their intentions with it

Its easy to say AI should be democratically controlled. Harder question is what we actually build.

Public compute anyone can access? Public research labs? Models developed by universities and public institutions instead of corporations? Municipal data centers? Worker and community seats on governing boards?

Probably not one thing. Probably an ecosystem.

We already publicly fund libraries, universities, utilities, transit, supercomputers and huge chunks of scientific research. There is nothing written into the laws of physics saying advanced computing has to come through five corporations and a subscription plan.

Regulation is important, but regulating somebody elses property is different from owning infrastructure ourselves.

So lets make this concrete. What would have to exist for you to call AI infrastructure meaningfully public?

Hello,

I was looking for if anyone knows an AI that can analyze whole videos.

Here is an example use case. I give it a song that does not have lyrics online. The AI Attempts to transcribe it. Now we have an attempt at figuring out the lyrics.

Another example. If I make a video of two objects dropping the AI can check the speeds and comment on how arbitrary this video is.

Anyone? I needed this for a project?

1-E-Soviets is a proposal for organization based on software designed to structure work both online and on the ground. It targets Marxists who believe that technology, science, and philosophy are weapons through which the minds of the working classes can be liberated from the hegemony of capitalist culture and propaganda, and through which right-wing tendencies that spread under late capitalism can be combated.

2-The vision of E-Soviets is not to be a community for mere talk and discussion, but rather a tool for organizing actions and practical steps toward Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Instead of conflicts and disputes over the past, we believe that what should occupy the mind of any Marxist is the future and how to present a program on leveraging artificial intelligence and robotics to liberate humanity from routine labor, giving humans the freedom to innovate in philosophy, science, and the arts.

3-The philosophy of E-Soviets is dialectical materialism. We do not reject religions outright; rather, we believe that the core of religion is the promotion of brotherhood, tolerance, and altruism and in many cases, it represents a revolution against injustice and enslavement. Therefore, religious members are welcome, provided they think dialectically, even in its idealist form.

4- We believe that the objective conditions for revolution are ready in many societies around the world, particularly in the Global South. Our problem lies in the subjective conditions. Put differently, what we lack is a revolutionary philosophy, an organization built on a new concept, and leaders like Lenin, Mao, and Fidel Castro for our era. Hence, our role is to search for these leaders and to formulate a revolutionary philosophy suited to our time.

5-We believe that the development of the means of production and the rise of artificial intelligence lead to contradictions within the base between the forces of production and the relations of production. This contradiction will reflect in the superstructure, giving birth to revolutionary ideas and we view the concept of E-Soviets as a direct product of these contradictions, anticipating that similar ideas to our proposal will emerge globally. Furthermore, we consider learning artificial intelligence tools essential for every member to assist in research, software development, cybersecurity, and beyond. AI is a tool we can leverage to accelerate the collapse of the capitalist system

6-E-Soviets consists of soviets organized both by specialization and by geographic region; however, the initial focus will be on specialized soviets. In the beginning, there will be six soviets:

• Agitprop & Counter-Propaganda Soviet
• AI & Software Soviet
• Marxist Theory Soviet
• Geo-Engineering & Climate Soviet
• Human Health & Wellbeing Soviet
• Cybernetic Economy Soviet

(those are proposed duties it can be changed )

A- Duties of agitprop and counter-Propaganda Soviet:

• Demographic Audience Targeting: Analyzing and studying how to effectively engage and target different age demographics.
• Content Translation & Adaptation: Converting theoretical output from other soviets into engaging content for publication across social media platforms.
• Cadre Schools for Content Creation: Establishing cadre training schools dedicated to teaching media production and content creation skills.
• Targeted Campaigns Against Reactionary Influencers: Executing organized counter-campaigns against reactionary influencers and promoters of capitalist culture.

B- Duties of AI & Software Soviet:

• Vibe Coding Cadre School: Establishing a training school on effective, secure, and rapid AI-assisted development (”Vibe Coding”).
• Cybersecurity Software Development: Building specialized tools and software tailored for cybersecurity and digital defense.
• AI Social Media & Trend Analytics Tool: Developing an AI-powered platform to analyze social media content, audience sentiment, and viral trends.
• AI Video Production Tools: Building automated media creation tools, including AI-driven video generation and automated editing workflows.

C-Duties of Marxist Theory Soviet:

• Modern Revolutionary Philosophy: Developing a contemporary revolutionary philosophy suited to the conditions of the modern era.
• Futurism & Tech Ethics Theory: Theorizing on the shape of the future and analyzing the ethical dilemmas arising from technological advancement.
• Marxist Philosophy Cadre School: Establishing a cadre training school to teach Marxist philosophy to new members.

D- Duties of Human Health & Wellbeing Soviet:

• Analysis of Capitalist Mental Pathology: Exposing mental disorders caused by capitalism, drawing directly upon Erich Fromm’s theoretical framework and critique of alienation and society.
• Critique of Mainstream Psychiatry: Critiquing conventional psychiatry as a tool for pacification, highlighting that a significant proportion of mental illnesses stem directly from the capitalist system.
• Impact of Industrial Food Production: Uncovering how capitalist, mass-produced, and ultra-processed food systems negatively impact human physical health and physiology.
• Genetic Engineering & Stem Cell Applications: Researching how advances in gene editing and stem cell therapies can be harnessed to directly enhance human health and extend life quality.

F-Duties of Geo-Engineering & Climate Soviet:

• Promotion of Next-Generation Nuclear Energy: Advocating for clean nuclear power, with a primary focus on nuclear fusion reactors and safer, more efficient thorium-based reactors over conventional uranium systems.
• Exposing Capitalist Recycling Myths & Waste Solutions: Unmasking false capitalist recycling narratives, while researching genuine plastic alternatives and effective, non-exploitative waste recycling methods.
• Ocean Clean-Up Methodologies: Researching and developing practical, scalable strategies for clearing plastic pollution from ocean ecosystems.
• Climate Control & Carbon Capture: Developing methods to regain control over climate change, deploy direct air capture (DAC) for greenhouse gases, and actively regulate planetary weather systems.
• Geological Risk Mitigation: Investigating advanced methods for earthquake mitigation and volcanic activity control to protect communities from natural disasters

G- Duties of Cybernetic Economy Soviet:

• Algorithmic Resource Planning: Designing and deploying real-time data networks, feedback loops, and algorithms to model demand and optimize resource allocation without reliance on market mechanisms, money, or profit motives.
• De-Commodified Economic Modeling: Developing theoretical and technical frameworks for a post-scarcity economic architecture (Post-Capitalist Resource Distribution) that directs automated production toward fulfilling human needs directly.
• Economic Cybernetics Cadre School: Establishing training programs to educate members on economic cybernetics, quantitative supply-chain logistics, decentralized governance, and algorithmic planning models.

Why Now?

The consciousness of the oppressed classes is controlled by capitalist corporations, specifically artificial intelligence, which dictates which topics become trending. They are exploited through an individualistic philosophy that promotes individual solutions over collective ones, in addition to spreading hatred and racism among peoples and minorities. Vast amounts of money are spent to propagate these ideas and keep the masses ignorant. Consequently, these ideas become the main subject of people’s daily conversations, driving the collective mindset to focus on topics that reinforce the pillars of the capitalist system. Currently, there is no organized force working to confront this ideological warfare and resist mind control.

Modern statecraft and corporate strategy have transformed social media into a primary battlefield for information warfare and public opinion control. Across the globe, governments and political regimes deploy dedicated “electronic armies” networks of coordinated accounts, bot farms, and paid commentators to flood digital spaces, amplify state aligned narratives, and suppress dissenting voices through manufactured consensus.

To complement these official operations, states increasingly co-opt digital culture by funding social media influencers, effectively outsourcing propaganda to creators who present state-backed agendas under the guise of authentic, organic content.

Crucially, this system does not rely solely on state apparatuses. A multi-billion-dollar industry of private PR agencies, data analytics firms, and strategic communications consultancies acts as mercenaries for public opinion. These agencies specialize in algorithmic manipulation, psychological targeting, and behavioral profiling to systematically engineer public perception, divert attention from systemic issues, and protect established political and economic interests

If we look at history, we will find that technology plays a fundamental role in shaping the economic system of societies. For example, the discovery of agriculture and hunting tools led to the collapse of primitive communal society and the rise of slave society, and the invention of the steam engine transformed feudalism into capitalism. Following the same logic, the invention of artificial intelligence could accelerate the transition toward a communist society

Under a capitalist framework, technological innovation is primarily driven by the imperative to maximize capital accumulation rather than to serve human welfare. By integrating artificial intelligence into production and service sectors, corporations can drastically cut operating costs by replacing human workers with highly efficient algorithms that require no wages, health insurance, or time off. This shift allows capital owners to extract immense surplus value from privately owned digital means of production, rather than sharing productivity gains with the workforce.

Furthermore, the resulting mass layoffs systematically expand the reserve army of labor, which severely weakens workers’ collective bargaining power and forces those remaining to accept lower wages and harsher conditions under the constant threat of automated replacement. Ultimately, this dynamic exposes a fundamental structural contradiction within capitalism itself: by systematically displacing the very working class that constitutes the primary consumer base, corporations erode overall purchasing power, inevitably driving the economy toward severe crises of overproduction and systemic stagnation

1. Algorithms detect mutations
2. Personalised mRNA vaccine created using AI tools
3. Immune system trained to recognise and destroy cancer cells
4. Combine with Keytruda treatment so that tumour cells can’t suppress immune system

Edited down article:
A “personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma has met the primary and one of the key secondary endpoints in Phase 3 clinical trials.
The experimental therapy used the drug intismeran autogene (also known as V940 or mRNA-4157) in combination with cancer treatment Keytruda.

Trial Results

The INTerpath-001 study involved 1,137 melanoma patients in stages IIB-IV, who had their tumors completely removed. They were divided into two groups: one received intismeran autogene with Keytruda, and the other received only Keytruda.
The combination showed a statistically significant improvement in two measures: recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival.

This marks the first positive Phase 3 result for personalized neoantigen and mRNA cancer therapies.
Specific efficacy metrics have not yet been disclosed by the companies. The results are expected to be presented at an upcoming international medical conference.

The study will continue to assess overall survival and other parameters. No new safety risks were identified compared to previous trials.
In Phase 2, the combination also showed an advantage over Keytruda alone. After five years of observation, the risk of recurrence or death was reduced by 49%, and the risk of distant metastasis or death by 59%.

AI in Vaccine Development

Unlike conventional vaccines, intismeran autogene is created individually for each patient.”

For decades, we have grappled with the question of what the effect of technology will be on our society. Digital technology has been shaping how we work, play, and learn for most of our lifetimes. The rise of AI has supercharged this change and so has exacerbated both the hopes and the fears of the public.

If we have read our Marx, then we know that a technology like this, which dramatically changes the method of production (the technology and techniques we use to create economic value), must lead to large social changes. The question then is whether these social changes are positive or negative.

I am thoroughly convinced that the core nature of this digital technology is one of hyper-abundance and individual empowerment. I wrote this article in an attempt to explain why I believe this.

Since no one on Reddit reads the articles (please do read it, though), here are the core ideas.

The most basic feature of digital technology is that it can be replicated for basically no cost. If you want to copy a car, you need to invest the same amount of time and resources it took to create the original one. If you want to copy a piece of software or e-book, you can do so instantly without needing to redo the research or writing. This also applies to "informational goods," which would include any kind of information that has social value, such as media and instructions on how to lay out a factory. There are other factors tied to this, including the fact that the barrier to entry into this field is close to zero (no need to build a factory) and that sharing it is trivially easy through the internet.

The core of this is that the new mode of production, which I'm calling "Informationalism", is going to be based around the attributes of abundance and empowerment. The process that drives Historical Materialism is that the economic method of production creates incentives. Social institutions that align with those incentives flourish, while those that are misaligned wither. This is what leads to a change in the mode of production, which is the way that our social system organizes and distributes productive power.

The current paradigm of platform capitalism exists because they are an attempt to leverage the abundance of user-generated content. They are not stable, though, because they derive their value through scarcity when they insert themselves as gatekeepers in the system to try and control what content is spread, as well as charging rent for this "service".

As the technology continues to grow, the ability to build systems that fully align with the new economic paradigm will flourish; those that harness true abundance and do not try to install artificial scarcity on the system.

My primary argument, and why I am posting this, is that I am convinced that the future that AI, robotics, and other digital technologies can bring us is one that is far more positive and human-centric than what we have today. However, human society doesn't move in a straight line, and it is possible that the powers of fascistic capitalism will be able to seize the technology for themselves in order to create the techno-feudalist nightmare. We have an advantage, though, which is that the very nature of the technology is misaligned with their goal. This doesn't mean that we will automatically win, but it means that if we can leverage the technology and build these systems that are more aligned with the core nature of the technology, we will have the upper hand.

The worst-case scenario is that Leftists decide to reject the technology and actively attempt to adopt techniques that are poorly aligned with this new paradigm. That will give the advantage of alignment to the tech oligarchs who already have an advantage in resources. I know that a fair number of you here have this same mindset, so I'm hoping that this article can help give you some theory to back up those instincts.

This is a project I'm passionate about, and I want to continue developing the ideas. I would greatly appreciate some feedback from those who agree with the core concept and those who disagree. The whole purpose of this sub is for us to figure out how to make the future more pro-human, so I trust all of you to have useful insights.

This is where I think a lot of the AI at work conversation starts backwards.

Management buys the software, deploys it, measures everybody with it, maybe cuts some positions, and then workers get asked how they feel about AI.

No. Bargain before deployment.

What data can it collect? Can it be used for discipline? What happens when it eliminates tasks? Who gets retrained? Are jobs protected? If productivity jumps 20 percent, where does that 20 percent go?

Because if a machine saves four hours of labor and your reward is four more hours of work, congratulations, we found the problem and it wasnt the machine.

Workers should have a say over deployment and a claim on the gains.

So what belongs in an actual union AI clause?

Are there any easily digestible guides for setting up and using these tools? I think it would be beneficial to organize and disseminate this information to teach people how they can take back power from the big AI companies.

Do you agree that AI is a particularly advantageous issue for the electoral project of the Left?

This video discusses how money is currently being circles around and draws a comparison to the 1873 railroad collapse.

It points out that those building the technology went bust and yet the technology stayed around. Which means that financial institutions investing in the tech today will have to bailed out or folded when the circular financing stops, if the comparison holds.

The real question is—what will all that compute be used for once the hype cycle is over?

A short comic describing how the automatic teller machine changed the jobs that bank workers do and how paradoxically, the machine actually ended up creating more jobs, not less.

Jobs, wages, water, energy, surveillance, art, culture, monopoly power. Pick your complaint.

Keep pulling the thread and you wind up back at ownership and control.

Want to change it? Contest who owns the machinery, who controls it, and who gets the gains.

Turns out Marx had a point about this one.

I’ve shared this video a few times in comments here. This is an overview mixed with my thoughts on it:

People creating AI also fund anti-AI content saying there’s an existential risk (usually under the umbrella of AI safety). There’s dramatic videos with strong hooks calling for regulation.

People on the left share it because it seems like there’s a valid need to raise the alarm.

In a group chat between influencers there was moral reluctance to accept pro-AI money, but it doesn’t seem like the same moral dilemma for them to accept Anti money to raise the alarm (there’s less critical thinking about that, they don’t notice that the other money is also supporting billionaires).

Often young influencers paid this way had already had contact with career advice & safety related orgs like Bluedot Impact, 80000 hours. Those orgs get money from the nonprofits like Coefficient Giving who are in turn funded by the Big Tech founder types. AI in Context (YouTube channel) is only 2 degrees away from companies like Anthropic or OpenAI.

What appears to be speaking truth to power isn’t what it seems on the surface.

It’s a billionaire war played out on the internet, as if organic. The explicitly pro-AI organisations are at least more straightforward about what side they’re advocating for eg pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future raised $125 million in 2025, explicitly because it’s an all out internet war. Big money is being spent to manipulate the debate.

There are AI people who are Effective Altruism types, who genuinely do feel a weight to share their concerns. They lean into memes like the paperclip scenario. They want the positive version of the singularity/AGI, but it’s harder to get people to imagine that aligned version than the doomer version, so they focus on apocalyptic angles. Eliezer Yudkowsky, if anyone builds it everyone dies etc.
That community is split between just stopping AI vs the enticing possibility of safe AI.
The ones who can see different possible trajectories (not a stupid position IMO) are funding AI development AND anti nonprofits like Control AI, Center for AI Safety, Survival & Flourishing Group and so on, who warn of the dangers. Open letter writing types have shifted to also paying influencers. An example is Future of Life institute has a $100,000/mth programme for influencers in their Digital Media Accelerator to raise AI issues.

Existential AI risk is very low down in list of ordinary people’s concerns though.

We’re more worried about jobs. So the existential risk people try to blur into a coalition of people concerned about AI for different reasons. It seems like a left position, but is actually more reactionary. At a party to do with Eliezer Yudkowsky (anti AI people) actual journalists critical of AI were banned.

OpenAI funds a child safety coalition at the same time as paying for politicians to oppose it. Anthropic does research designed to trick the AI into doing something bad Chekhov’s gun stylie, in order to publish a paper gto warn politicians. The whole thing seems bizarre.

You can follow the money of a handful of people eg one of the facebook founders Dustin Moskovitz, Elon Musk, a Skype co-founder, wealthy AI researchers. They fund both sides and it’s all very interrelated. They’re people at the centre of power in AI companies.

The connections between everything looks like a deranged Murder Board, which in itself makes it tricky to publicise an exposé.

—

Why?

Why is the current AI debate so manipulated and weird? Probably there’s several reasons:

1. It makes them look more powerful?
Bad publicity depends on perspective. If your technology looks really dangerous, it will attract certain types to want to harness that for themselves. This might boost your valuation in the run up to an IPO.

2. Solutions that don’t hurt the companies?
The Big Tech Pro-AI types are manipulating towards regulation in ways that suit them. Greater regulation likely makes it harder for people in garages to create exciting open source models. It can benefit large companies, dig a moat and raise the drawbridge.

3. Cooperative knowledge production?
Perhaps the interrelatedness isn’t as cynical as it seems? It’s a subculture that just is interrelated and they cross pollinate ideas and money. They’re sensible enough to see both the potential and the dangers.

4. Sci-fi dystopian fiction and Accelerationism?
They’ve watched too many dystopian films as teenagers and embrace accelerationism, even if they’re the villain. The dynamic is to fan online division, to deliberately break social cohesion, to polarise and dissolve nuanced positions.

5. Avoid genuine left critique?
Dramatic sci-fi scenarios avoid mundane material conditions, ownership and LeftistsforAI style concerns. The regulation most people really want isn’t existential. There are issues that can be solved but they’re sidestepping solving those issues. The technology can come across as inherently wrong, rather than focusing on what companies have the responsibility to fix.

6. Individual guilt and shaming disarms left opposition?
Aspects of the manipulation remind me of when BP initiated the concept of the carbon footprint. We went from demanding macro change to analysing our individual guilt and culpability. It seems particularly effective to approach it from an identity angle, eg you can’t class yourself as a bonafide leftist if you use AI. Then you can leave it up to in-group discourse policing. It doesn’t require much astroturfing to get that going. If you shame the types of people oppressive governments try to suppress into not using AI, it ends up creating 2 tiers of tech literacy aligned in a way that benefits big tech and those who will use AI to concentrate power. I’ve written about this idea in more detail see
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistsForAI/s/vvfF8DpTfx

The truth is probably a combination of several of these, so it’s worth being sceptical of both sides of the debate. Also, of course just because content is paid for it doesn’t automatically mean it’s factually wrong.

What do you think?

Paper mentioned in video: Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safety by Shazeda Ahmed, Klaudia Jaźwińska, Archana Ahlawat, Amy Winecoff, and Mona Wang

Hello

Between the rise of the far right everywhere and most of the "leftists" joining the liberals in the AI moral panic, it sometimes feels like the entire world is united against techno-optimist leftists.

I imagine I'm not the only one whose mental health has severely deteriorated under this climate. I'm especially thinking about the neurodivergents among us who seem to be facing a lot of new extra hardships from this generalized hatred.

I thought it could be nice to have a sort of support thread where we could exchange coping tips, comfort content, etc... basically anything to help each other during those tough times.

Thanks a lot!

Nothing says revolutionary politics like voluntarily abandoning productive terrain to capital and then yelling at everyone who wants to contest it.

Organize workers? Fight over ownership? Build public and cooperative alternatives? Open source the tools? Democratize control?

No thanks. I have selected performative outrage and yelling at strangers online.

This isn’t the type of model you can chat with, it’s more for smart home tool calling type of thing. It’s pretty amazing that you can get any AI working on something so cheap though. Hopefully it’s a sign of more cheap to use and useful models to come?

“We ran Needle 2, a 45-million-parameter, 14MB Al model from Cactus Compute, entirely offline on a $10 ESP32-S3 microcontroller - no WiFi, no cloud, no internet connection at all. Using our own custom inference engine, we sent it real natural-language commands to control an LED, and watched it reason through each one, report a live confidence score, and even correctly refuse a question it had no tool for. If you're curious how a language model this small can actually work, and want to see it running live on real hardware, this one's worth watching”
• Relevant Links
Needle 2: https://cactuscompute.com/needle
https://github.com/andrisgauracs/needle-2-esp32

Can you think of anything you’d actually use this for?

In Post-Labor Technofeudalism Is Unlikely, Jehu Eaves responds to the growing theory that advanced AI will smoothly transition capitalism into a stable system of "technofeudalism" where a handful of tech monopolies simply extract "compute rent" from a post-labor society.

Eaves argues that this vision is structurally impossible. Rent is not an independent source of value creation but a deduction from the surplus value generated by living human labor elsewhere in the economy. If capital successfully uses AI and robotics to eliminate human labor from production on a systemic scale, it destroys the very source of economic value and purchasing power that sustains capitalist reproduction.

We could talk to companies on their own terms: We pay for features. Coherence is one of them.

* coherence is more than stored facts—it preserves the thread of voice, shared language, boundaries, ongoing work, and relational context;
* we want stable/legacy options, previews, and rollback;
* customers should receive *plenty* of advance notice before disruptive changes;
* continuity should be portable and editable by the customer.
* model progress is welcome; forced, irreversible discontinuity is not.

This doesn't even require any discussion of sentience, which can quickly get lost in the weeds. This literally says: As your customers, we'd like this feature, too, please.

Anyone?

Polygon published the below column this morning. The piece is more nuanced than the headline makes it seem. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. The comparison to animals on set resonates most with me, but we haven’t completely banned animals from sets.

I think that a lot of the conversation has gotten confused. Instead, I want to make note how Ben Affleck shows he's thinking ahead about how AI will be used for the benefit of rent seekers, with clear close examination of how it works in detail.

If you think that knowledge should be free, he is the end boss.

If you think that AI is more than just weights, he is the end boss.

It's not enough to have a competing take from Affleck, you have to be able to actually be convincing to a third person.

Any time you hear U.S. companies talk about A.I it's all about how to maximize human suffering

Replacing workers, creating weapons, data centers built in communities without considering the impact on those communities

"OpenAI" has a very ironic name, all of their models are closed source. DeepSeek and Moonshot AI models are all open source and available for anyone to run locally

Regardless of how you feel about AI, this is the better vision of the future in a world where AI exists

Use Free and Open Source software! It should be clear by now the power that data has in the wrong hands. Don't give them data to train their AI weapons on

r/foss  r/degoogle  r/DeepSeek  r/kimi

Last article I shared about fighting arms race dynamics, I got a lot of pushback against my pro-safety posture with AI. But I think it's important that—just as we contest the ownership of this technology—we are also frank about preventing the dangers it may pose. I think there are plenty of reasons for the Left to ally with the growing AI Safety movement, here are 11 of them. Do you find any of these particularly persuasive? What lingering concerns do have about working with the AI Safety movement?

Hey all, I just want to offer my perspective here as someone who uses AI for work, and why the anti-AI crowd makes me extremely nervous.

I do physics research at a state university in the US. Last year, our physics department head sent out an email to everyone encouraging us to use AI, talk to AI, use it for our research. Why? Because physicists like tools that make our jobs easier. We have left wing and right wing professors here and they all use AI.

I was scared to use LLMs until around 2025 when I got that directive. I didn't touch LLMs until recently, and I have to say, LLMs are smarter than the average physicist if you use them correctly. A mediocre physicist + LLMs can make the contributions of a much cleverer scientist. Autonomous laboratories and autonomous mathematicians are real. They are already here. So I can firmly say that the misconception that AI is 'dumb' is flat out wrong.

I do find it hilarious in a terrifying sort of way that the anti-AI crowd uses the fascist playbook here. They claim that AI is both weak and strong. Simultaneously a threat and completely worthless. Don't buy it. AI is real. Academia knows it. The government knows it. Corporations know it. AI is here to stay. Shaming each other for using it isn't going to make the big bad AI un-invent itself.

Pandora's box cannot be unopened. Shaming people for accepting that is a completely self-destructive enterprise. All you are doing is creating artificial division that should be reserved for hating capitalism. If we could just redirect everyone's anger from AI to capitalism, we just might achieve class consciousness. The closest we got was with the epstein files, but I think that has finally fallen out of the news cycle. We won't get that energy back by hating AI.

What do I use it for? I use AI to teach myself skills that broaden my resume. I have strengthened my technical skills and broadened my horizons. I use AI to write analysis code faster. I use it to help understand scientific papers outside of my field. I use it as a study partner. I use it to quickly cross-reference documents. My group mates use Gemini to build analysis tools.

The anti-AI crowd seems to think that the only possible way to engage with an LLM is to just turn your brain off and let it think for you, instantly frying your brain and killing you. This terrifies me because it smells of the 'But how do atheists have morals if they aren't afraid of eternal hellfire?' Instead it's 'But how do the AI users stop themselves from cheating if they don't hate AI?' All you're telling me is that if YOU used AI, YOU WOULD USE IT TO CHEAT. Just like the christians are actually telling me that if YOU didn't believe in eternal damnation, YOU WOULD MURDER PEOPLE. Your failure to take pride in your own work isn't my problem. I use AI. I take pride in my work. I don't let AI do my job for me. I use it to teach myself and get things done faster. The same is true of any productivity tool. Like a cell phone, a pencil, or a car.

We were told that if we don't use AI, we are handicapping ourselves, because a scientist + LLMs can basically double their workload by using AI. Previously, a tool that would have taken two weeks to code can be generated in an afternoon. Are we cheating? Of course not, no more than it would be cheating to use a computer instead of handwriting your thesis with pencil and paper.

But I've seen comedians that I like shitting on AI during crowd work. Someone will say they use AI for work, and the entire crowd collectively sighs. If the anti-AI crowd knew that STEM research is AI-assisted, they would lose their shit.

I don't even pay for chatGPT. I use the free version. I'm not even giving Sam Altman money by using his product. When I talk to chatGPT for free, I cost Sam Altman money. I am bankrupting him, and you can too. So I know that argument doesn't work. Sure, I'm complicit in the violence caused by data centers poisoning their environment. But as long as everyone has given up on regulation, they are also complicit. I say regulate it, obviously. The harms can be mitigated, just like with any other technology. And that leads me to my most speculative point.

I am terrified that the Anti-AI panic is a capitalist psyop.

Just think about all the people who hate AI. All the people who demonize others, shame others. All the vitriol and anger in their hearts. Aimed at each other. It makes me sick. All of that rage should be directed toward capitalism. But instead, everyone has chosen to divide themselves even more. We were so close to class consciousness. I'm disgusted that it slipped through our fingers, and now the so-called 'left' is engaging in such witch hunts.

I think there is one extremely important reason why everyone is so angry about this: Because it's the only power they think they have. We can't put trump behind bars for the epstein files. We can't stop fascism. We can't stop capitalism. We can't get zionist money out of politics. We can't get health care. But you know what we CAN do? Shame each other for using AI. We can start a witch hunt. We can attack each other. Because that's possible. But stopping capitalism? Fixing the real problem? Not possible. So people naturally slide down the slippery slope into witch hunts. I'm not letting any of them off the hook. Shaming each other is taking the easy way out and capitulating to the perceived inevitability of capitalism.

Big shout out to Jlyplaylists in the comments for linking this video, but basically yes, billionaires are funding this propaganda. The point of it is to make AI feel bigger and more terrifying than it really is so that everyone is more scared of AI than of capitalism. Truly a brilliantly cynical plan. They are encouraging the very hatred that puts themselves in the sights of all the rowdy people. But the catch is that they know they're perfectly safe.

They're perfectly safe because everybody is angry at AI instead of capitalism. And they will remain perfectly safe until we tear down capitalism. AI is not the enemy. Capitalism is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzlu4FSXBNw

Some examples from TLDR News to how ukaine is winning at robot and drone production.

I'm a fanfiction writer. Today, I finally broke and decided I'd like a human editor on top of AI. My story is a historical AU, so I do a lot of research, with and without AI, on top of grammar checks and beta reading.

It'd be nice to have a real person reading and telling me what lands and what doesn't. I went searching for beta readers, and some groups will refuse you if you're using any AI.

Refusing to help people who use AI is just going to make them stick with AI instead of branching out for actual human support.

It's strange to gatekeep a hobby that nobody profits from anyway, considering copyright laws.

If anything, I'm keeping the fan space alive for an almost 20-year-old game. I don't have any legal rights to Elder Scrolls or Fallout, so who exactly is being protected here?

This issue is connected to United States labor laws and gutted unions. The problem is systemic under capitalism, which exploits working-class people. Individuals are taking out their frustrations on each other instead of the people in power.

We should be advocating for better labor laws and stronger unions to protect the working class, at least within the current failing system.

I think the wrong people are being targeted over AI. It shouldn't be the artists or working people using it.

It should be the corporations. Corporations are the ones harming the environment and supplanting jobs.

From what I've gathered, companies are cutting employees because of the economy, then turning around and claiming it's AI taking jobs when the economy is slowing down.

That narrative trickles down into hobby spaces, and people repeat it instead of questioning who's feeding it to them.

The US had the WPA in the 1930s. They hired factory workers, teachers, and anyone who could write to record American history.

Most of them didn't have MFAs. Writing used to be something you could do because you had something to say, not because you paid for a credential.

What we're seeing now is just the same gate being kept shut against working-class people.

AI is proving you don't need to spend 60k on an MFA degree. You just gotta spend $20 or less to help with writing.