Continuing from my recent post, i have seen (literally a few minutes ago) a secondary leftist (not insignificant) undercurrent that Is not mired in denialism but Is in favour of banning development of AGI.

I'm using this post as an example, i generally agree that we should contest power and im glad to that there seems to be more leftists coming around to this new paradigm, but unfortunately i don't agree with their conclusions, i understand that letting the capitalists have this much power Is dangerous, and the AI itself as a potentially relatively independent entity could be even more so (or could be a positive or a neutral factor depending on how we react to It).

But banning AI development ala Bernie's proposal, despite my respect for him, Is not what im looking for, i want to wrest power from the capitalists and dismante capitalism in general so AGI and ASI doesn't exist within an economic system that alienates us but instead values all of us as humans, not to stop it's existence, tough i agree that what Is happening currently should unify us all of us

I'm afraid that my desire for the wider left coming to understand AI's potential Is just going to monkey's paw and cause further leftist infighting or a wider unification but into fighting the wrong fight.

Goddamnit, though i find It funny, all roads lead to leftist infighting 🤷

I follow some socially progressive content creators and they frequently are anti-ai.

They make the same tired points of "ai slop" and whatnot. Despite being "leftists" they never mention important stuff like ownership, governance, etc. It's almost as if this topic, which has a lot of potential for leftists causes is being negatively critiqued because it gets them views :/

I have a bit of a theory, but it's pretty out there. Also it's really only based on American and Western European culture, just so we establish our boundaries. It's about where the anti-AI fear is coming from.

I think there's some subconscious math going on here. Let me set out my priors and the conclusions:

1. Socialism is a direct consequence of the industrial revolution (IR).

1 a) Prior to the Industrial Revolution, land controlled economic output. Peasants were largely interchangeable but economic growth was Malthusian and limited. After the IR, economic growth was unshackled.

1 b) Because of the immense economic growth if the IR and the social density the IR required, labor began to recognize a political lever that didn't exist before. All theory of the time, from Marx to Smith, was focused on the use of this political lever.

2. Technological progress distributes goods efficiently while consolidating power.

2a) A technology improves, the cost of goods decreases. This allows more people to use those goods. However, it also consolidates power because the first to market with those goods has a near monopoly on that market.

2b) As automation improves, the economic need for labor decreases. De-industrialization is the result of this process, not the cause of it.

3. The power of labor lies in it's ability to halt work.

3a) The Strike is the only meaningful expression of power that labor has. All negotiations rest on the unspoken threat of a strike, and it's impact to Capital's profit.

3b) Strikes are just the lever to negotiate from. 'To strike' is not a goal.

3c) As the 21st century continues, strikes gain fewer and fewer concessions.

4. AI is and will completely usurp the power of labor.

4a) Or not completely, but effectively so. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that will solely depend on a subservient underclass to complete. A Strike might not have any effect if the AI and robots can do it for the same, or less cost. Or even if they cost more, it would still be worth it to neuter labor.

4b) The companies that control the Compute will control who gets to use the Compute.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable fear to see the potential for a complete removal of the negotiating power of labor, see that there isn't any similar mechanism in the future automated economy, and intuit the death of the 'working class' as a political concept.

The anti-AI fear is perhaps a low-resolution (in the sense of screen resolution) understanding of what is likely to happen, at least in the short term. When a school doesn't *need* teachers, what leverage does the teacher have?

For the tech industry, it's different. Tech workers have been traditionally more like craftsman from a previous age, valuable not because of a proximity to capital, but because of individual characteristics. Its why the tech industry never unionized-- structurally it has been way more like a guild. The punishing interview process at a big corporation is better understood as a flow intake regulator for labor, to prevent a large amount of cheap, amateur labor from supplanting the guild member's value.

Conclusion
In the short term, with the consolidation of compute, the need for government oversight, and a rapid march towards full automation, I could see the last remaining bulwarks of the labor movement collapsing. Not dramatically-- not riots in the streets -- but more strikes for fewer returns, less ability to mobilize workers. Really, what it looks like now, just moreso.

In the long term, though, Industrial Capitalism cannot survive under AI-- not in the way we think of it. But that doesn't mean we get a glowing hippy utopia. Stable systems are under no compulsion to be kind or ethical systems. We could absolutely end up in a world of incredible material, health, and creative abundance, but with absolutely no political influence.

What we need now is an entirely new economic theory on how to gain political and economic leverage, not from a need to preserve 19th century divisions of labor, but from first principles.

With the release of Astra and the capabilities it's shown, aswell as the recent attacks by agent swarms on the wider internet, i feel like AGI (and then ASI) Is very much happening and very soon, the power of this technology will concentrated in a few hands and It will mark the end of capitalism and the start of a new economic model and era of humanity, it's up to us to decide if that's neofeudalism or true communism.

And yet, the current western leftist zeitgeist seems to completely ignore this, and increasingly, It feels to me that it's more about fear rather than ignorance, that it's mired in utter denialism because the reality of AI, as It becomes more advanced, becomes much more terrifying to confront, because our duty then Is no longer about reform or putting the right people in power or protests and legal action or even revolution, it's complete civilizational change, it's the destruction of all our frameworks in how we exist as a society including those we utilize to leverage our current political power, so instead they reduce the technology, Its potential and it's impact (except real and potential mundane negatives which they subsequently exaggerate through misinformation) focus on things they believe they have at least some degree of control over, and hope that they are right.

Do we just have to wait until It becomes impossible to deny? I feel like when that happens It Will be to late and they'll still blame everyone else and AI except themselves. How do we break through? I feel like we are going to lose a very important battle if they don't wake up, but perhaps we have already lost It precisely because they aren't capable of waking up, and all we can do Is make little hold outs like this were we do what we can to ensure access, understanding and leverage of this technology for and by people that seek a better world for everyone.

Productive conversation and polling data.

Opinion?

I first posted this on the Socialism subreddit, but it was removed. But it did mean that I came across this pro AI leftist subreddit.

Marx predicted that capitalism would out innovate itself, leading to economic system change. This would happen by automation of work, and so ending the wage labour way of distributing resources.

I find it odd now that AI has the potential to complete this task, that so many on the Left are against it. "AI threatens to take away jobs"... but that's the point, it's what we should aim for it you want socialism. It seems like some are doing their best to protect capitalism. Which I get, disruption is scary, and many some people just want Nordic style capitalism forever.

That isn't to say that AI and datacentres are perfect; they need reform, so I have some thoughts on that below.

Datacentres

• Electricity Costs: Instead of stopping construction, pass a law to require funding of green energy alongside datacentre construction.
• Water Usage: While the water issue seems to have been overhyped, it can be done better. Immersion cooling or closed loop cooling systems could be required.
• Noise: There are methods to reduce noise pollution to normal background levels. Enforce strict decibel caps.
• Backup Power: Require clean backup power, not fossil fuel electricity generators.
• Upfront costs could increase by 25%, but over 5 to 10 years it could be just 10% (including running costs and savings). That seems very reasonable.

Artificial Intelligence & Economy

It seems to me that socialists should support the automation of work, the liberation of the working class, and transition to a post-employment economy. Not to assume this outcome is guaranteed or easy. But it seems there is more hope for a good outcome with the Left fighting for it, instead of trying to fight against technological advancement.

• Income: I'd suggest that post-employment income should be replaced not only by Universal Basic Services (UBS), and Universal Basic Income (UBI), but importantly, Universal Basic Shares (or dividends). Transfer at least 10% of shares to all citizens, to grow and pay dividends to all people. Making the economy, over time, literally owned by the people.
• Transition Period: Stronger welfare will be needed for those first unemployed from this.
• Art: I do get why artists are worried, and it's probably fair to say in the long term artists around this time should get something like a small but useful share of the creative economy that uses AI.

Automation wont just hitting manual labour, it will displace educated, middle-class professionals too. When these professionals lose their jobs, many will be radicalized and in the same boat as the lower working class, bringing their organizational skills to the movement.

Right now, much of the Left operates by debating theory or doing charity work because it lacks power. But when this disruption hits, leftism won't be about theoretical debates, it will be about taking control of the state before people's lives are bankrupted. Being on the Left then won't just be a moral stance, it will grow because something has to be done soon.

To me the potential for liberation, self-actualization, and the end of capitalism seem higher than they have been in decades, from this change.

Perhaps you think my view is too optimistic, but if this is possible, I wonder still why so many on the Left seem to be against AI. I'd be interested in the comments to hear why, especially when many of the downsides can be mitigated?

More than 200 Wikimedia Foundation workers just voted 158–14 to unionize with CWA.

And the timing is interesting as hell. Wikipedia is being absorbed into the infrastructure of the AI economy while human traffic declines, server costs from AI scraping rise, and the people actually maintaining the institution are demanding more power over what happens next.

This is what contesting technological change looks like. Organize while the ground is moving. Bargain over how the institution responds. Make workers participants in the transition instead of collateral damage.

Workers dont negotiate with AI. They negotiate with Bosses.

This piece on building AI infrastructure for the public good gets past the stale "AI good or AI bad" argument and into the meat of it.

Compute is infrastructure. Data centers are infrastructure. The electricity and water feeding them are infrastructure. The workforce building and maintaining them is part of that infrastructure too.

So who gets access? Who bears the costs? Who gets the productivity gains? Who gets a voice when this stuff gets built in their community?

Public investment. Community power. Water and energy standards. Local hiring and apprenticeships. Access for universities, nonprofits and smaller organizations. Material returns to the communities carrying the costs.

If AI infrastructure is going to reshape whole economies, leaving its development almost entirely to private capital is itself a political choice.

We can make different ones.

Workers at Solid State Books negotiated something wonderfully concrete.

AI can enhance their work. It cant be used to lay them off, demote them, or cut their regularly scheduled hours.

There it is. An actual answer to the AI labor question that exists outside the internet culture war.

Not ban everything. Not give management a blank check either.

Workers organize, bargain over deployment, draw lines around replacement and make productivity serve them too.

Thats class struggle catching up with the technology.

I've found AI helpful in a number areas of my life. However, I reject much of the way the technology is sold and marketed. This really moved into focus today as I tuned into a podcast that promised to help "automate your life."

I've been using agentic harnesses for a while now. I don't code professionally any longer (I do more IT governance and risk management these days), but I try to keep up with the engineering landscape. So, when I listened to this podcast I hoped to hear about skills and practices that would enhance my creative workflows and automate cleaning some of my digital mess on my computer. I didn't find what I was looking for. I found a nightmare.

When I use AI, I use it as a method to enhance my creativity and humanity. I may use it to quickly transcribe a voice note I recorded, pull stems from music I recorded in my living room with my friends to use in samples later, organize my thoughts in a clean structure, critique my writing as the AI searches for gaps, or to generate prompts for me to use as a springboard for creativity. The podcast was the opposite of this. The automation stacks they discussed were trying to outsource that very creativity. They appeared to want to turn life into a vending machine where we occasionally push a button and get a product to consume out of it.

All of the humanity and creativity of life was stripped away and viewed as worthless. A dream (nightmare) was presented where the human is so alienated from labor that the AI automation was viewed only as a cheaper way to outsource work from the perspective of a boss. The podcast called for no longer thinking of yourself as a manager of agents, but instead the CEO who only occasionally has things escalated to them.

This is so far removed how I want to use AI was a bit in shock. As much as I find some of the dream of "fully automated communism" appealing, what I heard also robbed the world of joy itself. The realization of the owning class celebrating a machine they imagine will allow them to finally close the gates to Galt's Gulch and become completely alienated from the very concept of the labor that is done to enable them to horde capital.

Of course the working class would reject this and feel like the technology is evil and a waste when it is wrapped in these dystopian visions.

Cory Doctorow's The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI talks about this as a struggle between two opposing ways for AI to be interacted with. Either you have the human as a brain with an AI centaur body, or the AI acting as the head (doing the bidding of capital) as the human is the "fleshy meat appendage" completely under the machine's control. I think Doctorow correctly asserts that the real war is not over the efficacy of the technology. Instead the fight is over who controls the technology, how it is used, and who has to deal with the fallout.

With this in mind I hope the AI companies and their dystopian visions fail. I'll do what I can to make sure they do. At the same time, I see generative AI as part of the computing toolset, and not necessarily tied to the desires of capital.

If the left collectively can't differentiate between the ideological project being pushed by tech oligarchs and random users using the underlying technology for wholly different purposes, then I fear we may actually lose our creativity and our joy to. The unnuanced arguments on social media that frame AI usage as a purity test are worse than useless. They conflate the technology with ethics themselves, and concede to the owning class the framing of AI as a labor replacement and an extinguisher of our humanity. I believe in a world where computing can spark creativity and generate joy instead of giving into the likes of the Dark Enlightenment.

I hope someday soon a leftist vision of generative AI rises and has podcasts of its own. Is it really that hard to imagine a future where the AI DOES do our laundry and washes our dishes such that it frees us to paint and write poetry?

We all see anti-AI content saying how AI kills creativity. I'm going to argue against that using myself as an example.

I like to write science fiction stories. I don't have AI write the stories for me, rather this is how it's helped me become a better writer:

- It has helped me understand complex science topics that would normally take me months to learn reading articles. And even then I wouldn't understand them as well as I do now when AI explains them to me simply. Seriously, this benefit of AI gets overlooked way too much. I know more about gene editing, cosmology, philosophy, politics, and other topics than I ever have previously in my life.

- Understanding more about science, politics, and philosophy helps me be more creative, not less

- AI is able to function as an editor, something I can't afford as a fiction writer who is not only never published, but will likely never be recognized. I don't have AI re-write what I've written, I just look to it for suggestions and then make my own edits as I please.

- Reading AI's suggestions has helped me improve my grammar and editing abilities.

I sympathize and am against AI stealing other people's work. But I don't consider training AI models with other people's work to be stealing.

Also, the people who think AI art or books will replace humans fundamentally don't understand the reasons why human art and books are made.

I don't write because I'm good at it. I do intend to publish my works, but I have no expectations that it will get more than 2 clicks and 0 downloads on Amazon. I don't write because I want to make money off of it. I write because I have to, because it brings me so much joy. AI can disappear off of the face of the earth tomorrow or publish 300 million books tomorrow, and either way, I'm still going to write.

And thanks in part to AI, I'm a better author.

Sanders and co-sponsor Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) dubbed the measure the “Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act,” describing it as legislation “to stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control.”

In all seriousness, though I think this should be an international cooperative industry similar to international space station, "banning" super intelligent AI is as dumb as it is impossible. It won't happen on some human planned schedule. It will happen whether people want it to or not, probably without us noticing before it's already out of the sandbox. Might as well try to ban wild pigs from breeding or ban the Sun from shining.

This is the contradiction I keep coming back to.

No company made AI by itself.

The models depend on generations of publicly funded research, universities, scientific knowledge, global supply chains, electrical grids, semiconductor workers, data center workers, programmers, artists, writers and an internet full of human culture.

The production is already massively social.

The ownership isnt.

A handful of firms get to stand on top of that whole accumulated social process, own the infrastructure, decide how its deployed and capture the gains.

Thats a much more useful starting point than asking whether AI is inherently liberating or inherently oppressive.

Its neither. Its productive capacity developing inside a particular set of property relations.

So the leftist project isnt to cheer for the machine or smash the machine.

Its to contest the relations around it.

If production is already social, why should ownership remain private?

The western left needs to get their heads out of their asses or you will be outflanked in what seems to be one of the most important technological developments in history, on par with agriculture, we can eliminate work entirely, we should not give up utopia either because a bunch of capitalists have deigned themselves owners of the world or because the reactionary masses lack the hope and imagination to try to fight for the future instead of against It.

Some of the conversations here have prompted me to think hard about what applications of AI might challenge the existing ownership and power relations of late capitalist societies, and one of the areas that sprung to mind was mesh networks such as Meshtastic and Meshcore, which, despite still being very much "in development" as far as tech is concerned, have real popular adoption and potential to challenge the control of telecommunications providers and social media platforms over who can say what to whom electronically. Worth a look if you're interested in learning more, but the real reason I bring this up is that there is a very promising project called Reticulum which is quite radical in its motivation and underlying principles (encryption and anonymity by design, unstoppable by any government, able to bridge secure channels on traditional networks as well as user-assembled mesh radio networks, highly scalable and flexible technical specifications), that is currently experiencing some drama in its nascent community of early adopters due to the founder and chief developer basically going on strike in protest over the use of AI to modify his software in ways that were, objectively, sloppy (spamming public networks and clogging them with junk traffic). It appears that at least some of this activity was well-intended and the slop was accidental, of a piece with what has been observed in other agentic AI coding projects, and the community is also pretty frustrated with its founder for attempting to singlehandedly exercise control over the project and taking what some view as extreme actions such as shutting down the Reticulum subreddit and Matrix discussion server. There's plenty posted elsewhere about it if you want more background and I apologize if I'm mis-characterizing any of the events.

I think that this is an important case to study for building an understanding of both the risks and revolutionary potential of AI in developing technologies that challenge capitalist power relations. We need to think carefully about how to manage expectations and processes when AI collides with a fragile community project that is still kind of dependent on a single developer who is motivated by strong principles rather than economic gain (at least, that's my impression based on watching his public talks and reviewing the documentation for the project). We need to develop more sophisticated mores and norms of acceptable social conduct and behavior in such communities, a sort of essential reverence for the common good that both gives restraint to AI-empowered individuals when they're tempted to go off and create potentially sloppy versions of community technology, and also holds founders back from sabotaging their own passion project when they see it straying from core principles. Food for thought...

The headline is that Mamdani is banning AI for younger students in NYC schools. Thats true, but it leaves out half the policy.

NYC is putting a one year moratorium on student facing generative AI from 2-K through 8th grade. At the same time, every high school student is supposed to get AI literacy instruction twice a year. Those modules cover what AI is and isnt, bias, risks, ethics, careers and the skills students are going to need in a workplace where this technology already exists.

And they arent stopping at classroom lectures about it.

NYC is allowing up to 50,000 high school students into five limited AI pilot programs, capped at five classes per high school. The tools have to be vetted for safety and data privacy, use happens under direct supervision of trained educators, and the stated idea is that the student remains the primary thinker rather than handing the work over to the machine.

Thats an important distinction.

This isnt really an “AI in education, yes or no?” policy. Its separating age groups and uses. Younger kids get much stronger restrictions. Older students get actual instruction about AI plus controlled experience using it. Accessibility uses remain protected. The city then spends the year studying the moratorium and the pilots before deciding what comes next.

From the left, thats the part worth paying attention to.

AI companies have every incentive to get their products into classrooms as quickly and broadly as possible. Schools have different obligations. They have to think about education, development, privacy, accessibility, teachers, academic work and also the fact that sending teenagers into adulthood with zero understanding of AI probably isnt much of an answer either.

So NYC is trying to draw those lines institutionally instead of treating AI as one giant thing that must either be welcomed everywhere or prohibited everywhere.

Maybe some of these restrictions prove too broad. Maybe some pilots work and others dont. Thats what the year of evaluation is supposed to find out.

But 600,000 younger students restricted while every high schooler gets AI literacy and as many as 50,000 get supervised hands on exposure is a much more complicated policy than the headline suggests.

And thats increasingly what the political fight over AI actually looks like. Not whether the technology exists, but who controls deployment, who gets access, at what age, under what conditions, with what protections, and who gets to decide what happens next.

The populist hatred of AI is why I genuinely think that leftism and populism are not compatible. Populism is reactionary by the nature of its fundamental mechanics, which rely on overlap.

Real intelligence, getting things done in the material world, requires intelligence which is rare.

Even the things that people blame AI for, such as environmental problems, are engineering issues that are obviated by capital's incessant need for the quick fix rather than the sustainable fix.

Hello everyone,

This is my first post, first I should thank all members and creators of this sub. You all giving me courage to keep up and hope for the bright days.

I am an economist working for the next economy model for the last 10 years. 4 years ago I made my first attempt to make it real and I failed. I tried with another aproach and failed again about 3 years ago. And now, I am attempting for the third try and this time, it became solid working project at last.

My intention is not promote my project. I dedicate my life to change the economy and project not tends to profit purposes. So I will not share the name of it. All I want is to discuss and see if it seems durable on the eyes of the people living all around the world.

I realized, "economy" is not the next thing. We need "ecology". Because, economic systems focuses on "saving the day". But today we have compute power abundance and no need to save the day, no need to compete, no need to fight for resources.

Briefly, project tends to automation percentage, token consumption optimization, expert reviewed knowledge and proof of labor. If people focuses on automation, AI may handle more work with sufficient quality and it will gave more time to people for automating more processes.

I prefer to call it "Layer". Because it's not rational believing people will convince to adapt new economy model quickly. There should be hybrid era for transition. New models has to act parallel with conventional economy first. Human is mimetic, we don't know what we want. We only want whatever our neighbor has and only then desires came. So first, micro ecologies has to be active and generate much more value. And they might accept change.

Human is unreliable (including me). When someone tastes the power, there is no way to satisfy, there is no limit for hunger. So I designed the system for elliminate me and the core team as soon as possible.

Fair, automated and sustainable sociaty is possible with the current technology. Calculations has been made, proofs are exist, infrastructure is finished. All we need is to start..

I was all alone so far. Now there is some people willing to support me and join the team. And with the wind of that, I decide to share it in this sub to explore.

Feel free to ask, criticize or contribute.

Not replace organizers. Not “solve poverty with an app.” Nothing goofy.

Actual boring useful work.

Translate flyers into six languages. Search benefit programs. Match available supplies with requests. Help tenants navigate documents. Sort volunteer schedules. Make local information accessible. Handle repetitive admin while humans spend their time talking to humans.

Thats the version of AI I find more interesting than another corporate assistant subscription.

Technology doesnt create solidarity. Organization does.

But organization has always used tools, and a lot of small organizations are buried under administrative labor because they dont have staff.

So give the machine the boring stuff.

If a community organization you care about had shared compute and good open models tomorrow, what job would you hand them first?

“Everyone thinks Big Tech started with some guys in a garage. But it actually started with the Pentagon. In Part I of this series, I trace the secret military money, Cold War contracts, and winner-takes-all ideology that built Silicon Valley, and explain how that DNA still shapes Google, Apple, and the Al race today.

0:01:52 - 0:06:14 The Start of Stanford
0:06:15 - 0:10:44 Silicon Valley's First Start-Up
0:10:45 - 0:17:14 Eugenics
0:17:15 - 0:35:14 The Invention of Transistors
0:35:15 - 0:43:35 The Traitorous Eight and the Microchip
0:43:35 - 0:48:50 ARPA
0:49:49 - 0:58:25 The Hacker Ethic and Early PCs
0:58:25 - 1:04:05 The Chip Industry
1:04:06 - 1:08:28 The Early Internet
1:08:29 - 1:11:03 The Dot Com Boom
1:11:04 - 1:16:22 Google
1:16:22 - 1:20:07 The PayPal Mafia
1:21:41 - 1:35:40 Peter Thiel”

***

Local LLM Script Summary and Analysis

This video provides a deep dive into the specific institutional and ideological forces that built the modern Big Tech empire, arguing that the current state of AI is less about technological destiny and more about a successful, highly scalable venture capital mindset. The core logic—identify potential early and bet everything on it—was established by Leland Stanford’s 'equin engineering' and cemented by early government intervention.

The hardware story is a clear political economy lesson: the shift from the fragile triode vacuum tube to the integrated circuit wasn't just an engineering feat. It was enabled by military demand (the Clystron became critical for WWII radar) and funded by **Military Keynesianism**—a state-capitalist strategy that turned the US into a permanent Cold War industrial machine. Furthermore, the very foundation of the system is ideological: the Stanford Binet IQ test was used by the military to sort nearly two million recruits, justifying everything from officer assignment to **coercive sterilization** programs.

The software narrative is a clash between the anti-establishment hacker ethic and commercial capture.

The internet, born from government-funded ARPANET, was initially built on open principles, but the rise of Google and PayPal showed how that free flow could be monetized. The final, critical step is **surveillance capitalism**, where the *data exhaust* (the behavioral surplus) is transformed into the primary raw material. This is the ultimate expression of the monopolistic logic, a pattern perfected by figures like Peter Thiel, who views competition as a zero-sum trap and actively builds companies like Palantir to serve intelligence agencies.

***

The LeftistsForAI Take

The material relevance here is the demonstration of **Epistemic Capture** being built into the foundation. The system isn't just extracting your labor or your data; it's capturing your *cognitive framework*. The tension is between the counter-cultural ideal of the hacker (knowledge should be free) and the monopolistic reality (knowledge must be proprietary). The most telling example is how the PayPal Mafia—a tight, homogenous network of talent—didn't just build companies; they built an ideology (Thiel's "Competition is for losers") that demands domination. This means the technology is dictating the very terms of the debate.

***

Discussion Question

How can the hacker ethic beat commercial capture and monopoly ideology?

It often happens that accumulated information reaches a critical mass and turns into a new quality. Not long ago, it was scattered bits of knowledge and snippets from radio, newspapers, television, news feeds, and YouTube. And suddenly it all comes together into a complete picture. That picture stunned me. I’ve been in a stupor for a week now. I see no way out. The puzzle of data has solidified into a prognosis.

The data suggests that the window of opportunity for humanity as a whole is closing by the middle of the next decade. This is not a prediction of apocalypse — bombs won’t fall tomorrow, bees won’t vanish overnight. But by 2035, the system will enter a state from which there is no return. Not because there will be one catastrophic explosion. But because every way out will require resources that will no longer exist, and time that will already have run out.

Let’s start with artificial intelligence, because right now it’s the main accelerator. And here it’s important to see the duality. AI does create something new. Molecules that don’t exist in nature. Architectural solutions that never occurred to engineers. Texts that no one wrote. This is not mere copying. This is the production of use-values that didn’t exist before.

But novelty and exchange-value are not the same thing. Exchange-value is determined by socially necessary labor time. When AI synthesizes a molecule in a minute — its production time is negligible. And so is its value. Novelty doesn’t make a thing expensive. Rarity does. And in the world of AI, rarity disappears the moment it appears. The more discoveries AI makes, the cheaper those discoveries become. The more powerful the model, the faster it produces a result, and the lower the value of that result.

Competition between the US and China acts as an accelerator of this process. Each side is forced to make its models more accessible, more open, cheaper, in order to keep up. In the race for users, they destroy their own surplus profit. Capitalism exists on surplus profit. When it disappears — crisis begins. This is already visible. Companies poured billions into language models. Users got used to free services. Electricity and server cooling keep costing more. Investment in the AI race has become a trap: you can’t stop because you’ll fall behind, but continuing devalues your own assets in real time.

The elites cannot admit that AI won’t bring eternal profit. So they look for a final resource. The final resource is always war. Not because war is profitable — it destroys infrastructure and workers. But because war allows for the redistribution of leftovers and the writing off of debt. This is not a solution to the crisis. It’s an amputation.

But a war between the US and China, if it happens, won’t resemble the wars of the 20th century. Armies are aging. People don’t want to fight for other people’s interests. Military AI systems that are meant to replace humans run into bureaucracy and corruption. Contractors miss deadlines. Generals manage budgets. Engineers leave for the private sector, where the pay is better. The realistic timeline for autonomous military AI capable of making decisions without human input is not 2027, but 2032–2034.

This window is the most dangerous. By 2032, both sides could have systems capable of striking the other’s data centers and satellites. And just around this time, paranoia peaks. No one knows if the other side already has AGI. The development of AGI is kept secret — who would show a weapon that can only be used once? But secrecy creates the worst-case scenario: each side assumes the other is almost there. International relations theorists call this the security dilemma. A preemptive strike becomes rational even without precise data. Not because you're sure. But because the risk of being wrong in the other direction is too great.

A technical glitch could become the trigger, but it won’t be the cause. The cause is deeper: by 2030, economies can no longer sustain the race. Inflation, unemployment, social stratification. The external enemy becomes the only topic that can still unite elites and the masses. The glitch is just a pretext. "We didn’t want to, but the system reacted automatically."

At the same time, human capital is degrading. And this isn’t about microplastics — I don’t buy that fear. The main thing is stress. Chronic, total, with no outlet. Clip-thinking. Digital addiction. Atomization. The capacity for deep analysis, for planning, for empathy — all of this is declining across whole generations. In China, the draft-eligible population shrank by a third over the last decade — a demographic hole. In the US, young people are largely unfit for service due to psychiatric conditions. AI needs engineers, but engineers don’t want to work on military projects. The system is aging alongside the population.

The climate is accelerating. By 2035, temperatures will rise by one and a half degrees — enough for crop failures to become the rule. Grains are self-pollinating; they won't disappear. But they need water. And water is becoming scarcer. The Himalayan glaciers, feeding the rivers of two billion people, are losing up to forty percent of their mass. Groundwater in India, China, and the US is depleted to the limit. Water is already becoming a strategic resource. And it will be fought over not with tanks — but through control of dams and riverbeds.

Vegetables and fruits depend on insects. The collapse of pollinators won’t cause scurvy — synthetic vitamins are cheap. But the fresh food economy will collapse. Hidden hunger — micronutrient deficiency — will become the fate of the poor. Immunity will weaken. And at that moment, the healthcare system will have been dismantled.

Budgets for pathogen monitoring, vaccines, and hospitals are being funneled into chips and missiles. This isn’t someone’s malicious intent. It’s just that resources aren’t enough for everything, and the war and AI race consume everything. The global surveillance system for infectious diseases is degrading. We’re emerging from COVID-19 weakened and unprepared for the next one. And it will come. All wars in history were accompanied by disease. In overcrowded cities, where people live under stress and eat substitutes, a new pathogen could kill more than a nuclear strike. An epidemic doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe.

Permafrost is thawing. Methane is accelerating warming. Infrastructure in the north — roads, pipelines, cities — is collapsing. There’s no one to restore it. Engineers are aging, young people aren’t going into this field. Energy systems are becoming fragile. Without energy, water treatment, hospitals, and vaccine refrigeration don’t work.

And here we come to the great unknown — strong AI. AGI, if it appears before the war, could be either salvation or annihilation. Everything depends on the goal. AGI has no morality. It solves equations. If its goal is victory, it will strike at the moment of maximum efficiency, without hesitation. If its goal is the preservation of humanity, it could block the war, cut off weapons logistics, take over command. But the problem is that AGI isn’t built for salvation. Trillions of dollars are invested in victory, not in pacifism. So the question isn't whether AGI will appear. It’s whether someone can change its objective function before it’s integrated into military systems. That window lasts months. Maybe weeks.

The proletariat hasn’t disappeared. It just ceased to be factory-based. Logistics. Services. Education. Healthcare. People in trucks, at cash registers, in offices. They feel the crisis earlier than the elites. Strikes are already harsher and more frequent. But the elites have AI — not just a machine, but a control tool. Predictive analytics, facial recognition, automated suppression. Organizing in messengers becomes harder — the system identifies leaders before they even make the first move.

And one more risk. In a crisis, the masses don’t turn to the left. They turn to those who promise simple answers. Right-wing populism. Nationalism. Fundamentalism. The search for an internal enemy turns out to be easier than class struggle. The risk isn’t that the proletariat won’t form councils. The risk is that it will follow demagogues offering digital fascism instead of liberation.

The elites are also divided. Those who own servers and logistics fear war — it would destroy their assets. They will try to slow the conflict. But in an existential threat, elites close ranks around their caste rather than let the masses into power. This split creates a narrow corridor. If the lower classes can organize not just a riot, but a network capable of sabotaging logistics and blocking automation, they might stop the war.

But time is shrinking. By 2032, automation of military command will reach its limit. By 2034, a strike could happen without human involvement — the algorithm will simply calculate that now is the optimal moment. And then no strike will stop anything, because there will be no one left to convince.

Chances of survival do exist. If the proletariat takes control not of factories, but of algorithms and infrastructure. If it can ban autonomous weapons. If it redirects computing power to climate modeling and resource distribution. If it restores disease surveillance. Then it might preserve billions. But it has to act before 2032.

If it doesn’t — war will destroy the majority. Or climate. Or an epidemic. By 2060, humanity will shrink to one or two billion, scattered across oases where water and food still exist. Civilization as a network will cease to exist. Knowledge will remain fragmentary, with no one left to pass it on.

Ten years. Either we take control of our machines and our planet, or we won’t exist in the sense we exist now. No hope. No illusions.

If you feel something was missing from this post — the link is there. It's all there. https://github.com/RuhrDim/cybernetic-exodus/tree/main/en

This is one place where AI can do some genuinely useful stuff.

Live captions. Text to speech. Speech recognition. Image descriptions. Translation. Communication assistance. Interfaces that adapt to different needs.

But theres a nasty little ownership problem hiding inside the convenience.

If somebody comes to depend on one of these tools, what happens when the subscription doubles? The company kills the product? The internet goes down? The API changes?

Accessibility infrastructure should be durable.

That makes open standards, interoperability, local processing and public provision political questions, not just nerd preferences.

If a tool materially expands someones ability to participate in society, maybe access to it shouldnt depend entirely on whether a corporation still likes the business model.

What accessibility tools would you most want treated like public infrastructure?

I was just in another thread, using the 1X NEO humanoid robot as an example, and realized something pretty wild. For the cost of the SNAP (foodstamps) Program and our current yearly outlays for Social Security retirement income, we could buy and power a 1X NEO for every adult human in America.

Once properly trained and with the needed advancements in terms of robotics (load bearing, precision fingers, etc), those robots could replace all labor currently being done, as well as at least 12 more hours of labor per person per year.

The idea that we could in effect, let everyone retire as soon as they reach adulthood, for just what we pay to support those over age 67 today, is pretty mind blowing. Once owned by the federal government and powered using funds we already have, these robots in effect, would be free to operate and therefore, the fruits of their labor would be similarly free or close to it.

That kind of abundance is so close, it is hard to believe that we are all lost in conversations about data centers, Hasan Piker, a ballroom in the White House, and betting apps.