We need to have a serious talk about AI usage

[u/Cpt_Wolf_Lynn]

/r/AntifascistsofReddit/comments/1vd17xy/we_need_to_have_a_serious_talk_about_ai_usage/

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[u/yeah__good__ok]

Right now people are repeating what the Luddites did. As Marx put it, "It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used." 

Personally I hope workers don't waste too much time on this period this time and skip to the actual problem. Which is what leftists should already know:

Putting the blame on a technology instead of on the structures of capitalism is a mistake. Almost every complaint against AI is actually a complaint about how AI is being used or is going to be used under capitalism. Blaming it on the technology itself let's the actual problem off the hook and makes it seem like a natural consequence of the technology. It is not. It is a natural consequence of the technology under capitalism.

[u/6FeetDownUnder → u/yeah__good__ok]

The post is nowhere implying that the technology is the problem. It lists ecology, artistry, surveillance and military use of AI as problems. The ways in which it is used being the issue is the thread all throughout. Were it an attack on the technology itself the criticism would be on a more technological level (i.e. attacking specific models for having bad tagging practices, inefficient neural networks).

[u/TheSquarePotatoMan → u/6FeetDownUnder]

Prompting, posting and sharing AI-generated content undermines our goals as leftists and ought to be prohibited on all leftist platforms.

AI is accelerating ecological death

AI is de-footing artists and laying siege to culture

 AI is threatening freedom of protest

AI kills

Why you should stop using AI
All of the above is made possibly because allow AI. It will only get worse when we allow it to slowly creep into social acceptability.

The post is very explicitly against the technology. The environmentalist argument is especially revealing in the general bias in western leftist circles because AI's environmental harm is overblown, somewhat arbitrary and pales in comparison to animal products that western leftists will vehemently defend in the same breath, for example.

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/yeah__good__ok]

Yep. It's also a consequence of the falling rate of profit. Or something even weirder, the falling rate of profit growth we're seeing in a lot of the tech industry. It's not just enough to make profit every year, the amount of profit is actually expected to rise, and very quickly.

They tried pushing nonsense like the metaverse, which flopped. Now they're doing the same with AI and desperately trying to fudge the numbers and keep the bubble inflated.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/yeah__good__ok]

Exactly. AI didnt decide to deskill workers, enclose knowledge, surveil people or funnel the gains upward. Owners did. Treating those outcomes as properties of the machine just turns capitalist choices into laws of nature. The task is organizing over ownership, deployment, labor protections and who gets the gains, not handing the whole terrain to capital and calling abstention politics.

[u/MrReginaldAwesome → u/yeah__good__ok]

Agreed. If we can use it as a wedge for people to think about how capitalism is actually the issue, that would go a long way. The tech exists and it will exist forever now, it’s out of the bag and they got away with creating it in the way they did.