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Workers’ fear of new artificial intelligence technology makes sense: that technology has the potential to eliminate their jobs. But if we didn’t live under capitalism, AI could be used to liberate us from drudgery rather than hurl us into poverty.
Of course, everything still depends on the human who is entering the prompt to tell the AI what to do. But nobody who sees these things in action can doubt that we’re entering a very strange new era in which a great deal that could be done by hand will soon be automated.
Many artists are up in arms about the new AI programs — and with good reason. Some are furious that their works have been used as training data without their permission. Others fear that corporate clients will simply turn to machines to do the work that used to be done by human hands. AI is causing the cost of image generation to plummet. In a capitalist economy, where everyone depends for survival on the value of their labor in the marketplace, a massive drop in the value of a skill will cause widespread suffering.
People are right to be terrified of the disruptions that AI might cause within our lifetimes. But when we think about what those disruptions actually are, it’s clear that the main problem is not actually the development of the technology itself. Introduced under a different economic and political system, few of the risks would be so grave.
The problem is that new generative AI is being introduced into a capitalist society that is ill-equipped to handle it.
How about this: once the job that you train for is automated, you get an automation pension and get to relax for the rest of your life. Everyone will be praying their job is next on the list to go.
We need to be clear on the source of the problems with AI. They are real and will accelerate the crisis that socialists are devoted to helping humanity solve. But the problem is not technology itself. Technology should be a tool for liberation. Unless we transform the economic system, however, it will be a tool for ever greater exploitation and predation.
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Analysis – “Bernie Sanders was a few years too early. I am not sure if he is running for presidency in the upcoming elections or not, but if he was and he was able to articulate to the public the capability of AI and the soft killing of capitalism he might at least bring up some very valuable topics of discussion. I could not agree more, that AI means less capitalism, and I have always been in agreement with capitalist thinking until lately.
AI means we need to rethink our economic model. I have been watching a lot of Eric Weinstein podcasts lately and he brings up this idea. But does not fail to point out the risks and weaknesses of AI. For instance, currently, AI draws references from the corpus of internet content. So it can not tell us much about topics that are very niche with only 200 people talking about the subject online.
It is interesting to me that even before the AI boom there were many discussions of technological unemployment and ideas of that kind of future, but lately those public figures are not in the limelight. I am hopeful that they are studying up and preparing to appear to the public soon.” – Easton Nguyen
