Marxists: Capitalist technological creation and fixed capital accumulation and automation will lead to mounting contradictions and be the eventual base of a fully automated socialist society
Also Marxists: No, don't create automation don't accumulate fixed capital or advance technology. Let's remain stagnant in 20th century technology forever
That analogy doesn't work because you can solve climate change by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. You can't "solve" the existence of deep learning tech except by somehow deleting every trace of its existence and somehow preventing people from creating it again.
In abstract using math problems to do creative work it tacky, banal, and evidence of a lack of imagination and seriousness. But that's not a problem. There have been crass philistines that shouldn't be invited to parties since the dawn of time. Humanity will survive.
In this specific case math problems are being used to immiserate working class artists and reduce everyone's quality of life by replacing creative work with shitty madlibs copypasta. The solution, surprise surprise, is to abolish the economic form that incentivizes the private accumulation of capital! Ie, abolish capitalism.
Because this is literally just another example of capital seizing the commons in order to profit from it.
Oooh oh shit he's got a materialist analysis of the problem noooo mah reductive retreat in to scientism to avoid discussing icky feels! What will I do now?!
I wasn't equivocating the two problems, I was pointing out the absolute ridiculousness of the assertion that pointing out problems with society is somehow anti-Marxist. Literally the main thing Marx did was point out problems in society!
Except Marx’s proposed solutions were to use the trends and directions of capitalist society against it, to allow its own contradictions to defeat itself. Not to criticize and whine and try to freeze things in place somehow, those who try to regulate and freeze capitalism in place are reformists and are doomed to failure.
Artificial Luddite reaction against AI automation can only slow it temporarily, not stop it globally. It’s inevitable and the end point of capitalism. There’s nothing you or I can do to stop it, and in fact it’s necessary for socialism for these productive forces to advance to the point of post-scarcity. We simply need to seize them.
So it’s not useful to scaremonger about the technology itself, it’s only useful to promote the seizure of the technology for our own ends.
If you understood Marx and Historical Materialism, this would be more clear. Capitalism is not ontologically evil, capitalism has no moral character it is merely a necessary stage before socialism. This is where a lot of left moralists diverge or misunderstand Marx, and why many also are too harsh on the PRC.
What ends could their possibly be to siezing Chat GPT? That we can generate meaningless blocks of text more quickly?
The capitalists will use this and other generation tech to eliminate jobs, naturally - socialists, whose society should not be enslaved to market dynamics, should be able to recognize that this tech is destructive and eliminate or severely restrict it accordingly.
So it's a technology that can eliminate jobs, but it's also entirely useless in the hands of a worker-controlled economy? Only one of these two things can be true.
You misunderstand. AI generation doesn't meaningfully replace art, but it can substitute for art in contexts where volume trumps content, and if it is embraced on an industrial scale it has the potential to permanently damage art as an institution. Under capitalism, where raw output is a consideration of every artist who needs to be able to make a living, the faux art generated by algorithms will inevitably be mass adopted regardless of the damage it does to society.
What damage? If AI art existing and some people ascribing meaning and/or value to is giving the writer of this article (or anyone else) an existential crisis, that is a personal problem, not societal damage. It isn't a "precursor to fascism" like this absolute shitpost of a Medium article suggests.
But if the jobs are useless, then you're still not really any better off by banning it under socialism. And which jobs, exactly, are being considered useless here? Aren't we worried about artists mainly?
You're inventing specters of points I never made. The things I've said are a) Marxists should critique society and b) AI generation tech has no place in a post capitalist world.
Lemme try an analogy. Imagine that the capitalists invented a machine that makes sand, which they then sold as food. This machine would not be worth reproducing under socialism.
If it’s as bad as you say, you have nothing to worry about. Human artists will keep their jobs because the sand gives no nutrients.
The very fact that you are so scared of this technology belies your point that it’s totally useless and doesn’t produce anything of value.
You are contradicting yourself. Is AI automation going to replace all the food production in the world with sand? That makes no sense and nobody will buy it or use it.
If the AI and automation is a viable threat to you, that is because it is creating socially necessary outputs and you fear being replaced.
You misunderstand. AI generation doesn’t meaningfully replace art, but it can substitute for art in contexts where volume trumps content, and if it is embraced on an industrial scale it has the potential to permanently damage art as an institution. Under capitalism, where raw output is a consideration of every artist who needs to be able to make a living, the faux art generated by algorithms will inevitably be mass adopted regardless of the damage it does to society.
AI chatbots can be useful for some things. They do have limitations though. Maybe if they could be connected to the internet without instantly turning extremely fascist as opposed to the normal, statistically average level of fascism it gets from a single dose of the internet (in addition to a number of other re-education measures), they'd be a lot more capable and could serve as a good alternative to search engines.
Deep learning technology as a whole is something that you would absolutely fucking want if you had any intention of running a planned economy and has a number of other applications. These require the same tools and resources to produce and operate and operate off of similar principles.
You are basically just being a Bernstein complaining about monopolies and trying to pass anti-trust legislation to protect small businesses.
As Lenin pointed out, monopolization is inevitable under capitalism and its logical end point. It’s also necessary, as only monopolized industry can be easily seized. Capitalism creates the conditions of its own defeat and builds the base of the next system to come that will replace it.
Just like this, automation is inevitable under capitalism and its logical end point. It’s also necessary, as only a post-scarcity and automated based can enable socialism. Capitalists build the base and develop productive forces, and then once it becomes mired in its own crisis it can then be seized for the replacement.
This is the Marxist conception of capitalist development into socialism. You are simply a reactionary or an idealist if all you can do is whine about the inevitable direction of capitalism and attempt to hold it in stasis instead of using the contradictions of capitalism against it.
Trust busting is Liberal policy and anti-Marxist as it preserves capitalism for longer. Policies meant to hinder or prevent automation, or regress to an earlier period of technology, are Liberal policies and anti-Marxist as it preserves capitalism for longer and prevents the necessary development
You don’t need to aid the capitalists in automating things or monopolizing things, they will do it on their own no matter what you do.
The solution however is not for the dispossessed petty bourgeois to implement anti-trust and freeze capitalism in place, not is the solution for the unemployed workers to destroy technology through Luddite reaction. These are both failed and doomed strategies. They are ultimately reactionary, in that they refuse to deal with the progression and development of society and seek to freeze it in place forever (not even possible, it will fail).
The solution is to organize the dispossessed and unemployed into seizing these monopolies and automated technologies for themselves and cut the reactionary idealist shit that completely ignores the trends of capitalism and historical materialism and development
Why would the dispossessed masses ever join with the communists to sieze the means of production if the communists haven't taken the time to articulate their better world? Nobody will want to be our friends if we just reject all critique and say "artists losing their jobs is good actually"
You don’t have to say workers or artists losing their jobs is good.
You say “artists losing their jobs is the inevitable consequence of our capitalist society. Let’s seize the automation and share it among ourselves, and use these productive forces for the good of all humankind instead of just a small clique of owners”
The difference is important, because your proposed solution is a dead end doomed to failure and people will stop listening to communists if your solution is Luddism that fails over and over. You just want to ban AI within the context of capitalism to ameliorate harm within capitalism temporarily. Someone else in another capitalist nation will just surpass you and do it anyway. You will become obsolete and stuck in old technology while the world moves on without you, and you will be frozen in a less advanced form of capitalism still, until it buckles because other capitalists are outcompeting you.
I never proposed a solution, aside from a post-revolutionary hypothetical in another branch of this comment tree. I took issue with what I percieved to be the assertion that Marxists shouldn't analyse and complain about things.
Automation is great, I love automation. But the point of the article is that this AI tech is not automating writing, what it is doing is automating a facsimile of writing, and that to accept the output of these algorithms as equally valid works of art as those made by actual people is a damaging and nihilistic worldview.
Basing things on what you “want” and not what is actually possible is idealism yeah. AI is coming and there’s nothing we can do about it except seize the infrastructure when the time is right, and use its power for ourselves
Y'all really hate the idea that there might be anything in life that can't be discussed in the language of heavy industry, don't you? Like someone starts talking about feels and it's like "No! YOu fool! You moron! The only things worth caring about are production throughput in tractor factories! How could you possibly care about anything else at all?!?!?!"
A) why are you worried about these things? they live in the deepest and most unsettling parts of the uncanny valley. From an artistic perspective, they're a joke.
B) Material conditions change. You can't pretend them away or waste your time trying to stuff cats back in bags. That way lies the failure of Luddism: it had no answer to the looms beyond their destruction, which meant it was doomed to failure. You have to find a way to use the thing in a just manner, not smash it and expect it to just go away. Luddism's problem isn't that it doesn't identify a real and significant harm, it is that the answer it presents to that problem is the political-economic equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "I can't hear you!"
C) You can feel however you like about a thing. Feeling that way is ultimately unrelated to the conditions and technologies that led to its creation, however, and it isn't cause to pursue a quixotic task.
I'll admit marxists sometimes do this but honestly in this case I don't really see a problem.
This whole anti AI trend is reactionary to the core, it's based on nothing other than "the machines took our jobs" and "machines cannot feel therefore machine art BAD".
Marxists: Capitalist technological creation and fixed capital accumulation and automation will lead to mounting contradictions and be the eventual base of a fully automated socialist society
Also Marxists: No, don't create automation don't accumulate fixed capital or advance technology. Let's remain stagnant in 20th century technology forever
And yet if you call someone anti-materialist over this, it breaks their mind for weeks.
Not wanting your quality of life to significantly degrade because tech bros are stealing to commons again is anti-materialist got it.
It is if you don't have any realistic plan whatsoever to actually eliminate the problem, and instead choose to endlessly complain about it.
That analogy doesn't work because you can solve climate change by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. You can't "solve" the existence of deep learning tech except by somehow deleting every trace of its existence and somehow preventing people from creating it again.
In abstract using math problems to do creative work it tacky, banal, and evidence of a lack of imagination and seriousness. But that's not a problem. There have been crass philistines that shouldn't be invited to parties since the dawn of time. Humanity will survive.
In this specific case math problems are being used to immiserate working class artists and reduce everyone's quality of life by replacing creative work with shitty madlibs copypasta. The solution, surprise surprise, is to abolish the economic form that incentivizes the private accumulation of capital! Ie, abolish capitalism.
Because this is literally just another example of capital seizing the commons in order to profit from it.
Oooh oh shit he's got a materialist analysis of the problem noooo mah reductive retreat in to scientism to avoid discussing icky feels! What will I do now?!
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I wasn't equivocating the two problems, I was pointing out the absolute ridiculousness of the assertion that pointing out problems with society is somehow anti-Marxist. Literally the main thing Marx did was point out problems in society!
Except Marx’s proposed solutions were to use the trends and directions of capitalist society against it, to allow its own contradictions to defeat itself. Not to criticize and whine and try to freeze things in place somehow, those who try to regulate and freeze capitalism in place are reformists and are doomed to failure.
Artificial Luddite reaction against AI automation can only slow it temporarily, not stop it globally. It’s inevitable and the end point of capitalism. There’s nothing you or I can do to stop it, and in fact it’s necessary for socialism for these productive forces to advance to the point of post-scarcity. We simply need to seize them.
So it’s not useful to scaremonger about the technology itself, it’s only useful to promote the seizure of the technology for our own ends.
If you understood Marx and Historical Materialism, this would be more clear. Capitalism is not ontologically evil, capitalism has no moral character it is merely a necessary stage before socialism. This is where a lot of left moralists diverge or misunderstand Marx, and why many also are too harsh on the PRC.
What ends could their possibly be to siezing Chat GPT? That we can generate meaningless blocks of text more quickly?
The capitalists will use this and other generation tech to eliminate jobs, naturally - socialists, whose society should not be enslaved to market dynamics, should be able to recognize that this tech is destructive and eliminate or severely restrict it accordingly.
So it's a technology that can eliminate jobs, but it's also entirely useless in the hands of a worker-controlled economy? Only one of these two things can be true.
You misunderstand. AI generation doesn't meaningfully replace art, but it can substitute for art in contexts where volume trumps content, and if it is embraced on an industrial scale it has the potential to permanently damage art as an institution. Under capitalism, where raw output is a consideration of every artist who needs to be able to make a living, the faux art generated by algorithms will inevitably be mass adopted regardless of the damage it does to society.
"the damage that it does to society"
What damage? If AI art existing and some people ascribing meaning and/or value to is giving the writer of this article (or anyone else) an existential crisis, that is a personal problem, not societal damage. It isn't a "precursor to fascism" like this absolute shitpost of a Medium article suggests.
The way to square that circle is to say that the jobs it's eliminating are useless lol
But if the jobs are useless, then you're still not really any better off by banning it under socialism. And which jobs, exactly, are being considered useless here? Aren't we worried about artists mainly?
Love that the people with Marx in their name never understand Marx.
Moralism? Check. Luddism? Check. Failure to understand historical materialism and capitalism’s role in developing automation and production? Check.
You're inventing specters of points I never made. The things I've said are a) Marxists should critique society and b) AI generation tech has no place in a post capitalist world.
B is absolute dogshit anti-Marxist dribble
Marx was famously against capitalism developing productive forces. He wanted to destroy it and live in 1800s technology forever, he was Amish
Lemme try an analogy. Imagine that the capitalists invented a machine that makes sand, which they then sold as food. This machine would not be worth reproducing under socialism.
If it’s as bad as you say, you have nothing to worry about. Human artists will keep their jobs because the sand gives no nutrients.
The very fact that you are so scared of this technology belies your point that it’s totally useless and doesn’t produce anything of value.
You are contradicting yourself. Is AI automation going to replace all the food production in the world with sand? That makes no sense and nobody will buy it or use it.
If the AI and automation is a viable threat to you, that is because it is creating socially necessary outputs and you fear being replaced.
You misunderstand. AI generation doesn’t meaningfully replace art, but it can substitute for art in contexts where volume trumps content, and if it is embraced on an industrial scale it has the potential to permanently damage art as an institution. Under capitalism, where raw output is a consideration of every artist who needs to be able to make a living, the faux art generated by algorithms will inevitably be mass adopted regardless of the damage it does to society.
AI chatbots can be useful for some things. They do have limitations though. Maybe if they could be connected to the internet without instantly turning extremely fascist as opposed to the normal, statistically average level of fascism it gets from a single dose of the internet (in addition to a number of other re-education measures), they'd be a lot more capable and could serve as a good alternative to search engines.
Deep learning technology as a whole is something that you would absolutely fucking want if you had any intention of running a planned economy and has a number of other applications. These require the same tools and resources to produce and operate and operate off of similar principles.
Very anti-Marxist worldview
I would argue that pointing out bad things is an essential first step in Marxism.
You are basically just being a Bernstein complaining about monopolies and trying to pass anti-trust legislation to protect small businesses.
As Lenin pointed out, monopolization is inevitable under capitalism and its logical end point. It’s also necessary, as only monopolized industry can be easily seized. Capitalism creates the conditions of its own defeat and builds the base of the next system to come that will replace it.
Just like this, automation is inevitable under capitalism and its logical end point. It’s also necessary, as only a post-scarcity and automated based can enable socialism. Capitalists build the base and develop productive forces, and then once it becomes mired in its own crisis it can then be seized for the replacement.
This is the Marxist conception of capitalist development into socialism. You are simply a reactionary or an idealist if all you can do is whine about the inevitable direction of capitalism and attempt to hold it in stasis instead of using the contradictions of capitalism against it.
Trust busting is Liberal policy and anti-Marxist as it preserves capitalism for longer. Policies meant to hinder or prevent automation, or regress to an earlier period of technology, are Liberal policies and anti-Marxist as it preserves capitalism for longer and prevents the necessary development
You don’t need to aid the capitalists in automating things or monopolizing things, they will do it on their own no matter what you do.
The solution however is not for the dispossessed petty bourgeois to implement anti-trust and freeze capitalism in place, not is the solution for the unemployed workers to destroy technology through Luddite reaction. These are both failed and doomed strategies. They are ultimately reactionary, in that they refuse to deal with the progression and development of society and seek to freeze it in place forever (not even possible, it will fail).
The solution is to organize the dispossessed and unemployed into seizing these monopolies and automated technologies for themselves and cut the reactionary idealist shit that completely ignores the trends of capitalism and historical materialism and development
Why would the dispossessed masses ever join with the communists to sieze the means of production if the communists haven't taken the time to articulate their better world? Nobody will want to be our friends if we just reject all critique and say "artists losing their jobs is good actually"
You don’t have to say workers or artists losing their jobs is good.
You say “artists losing their jobs is the inevitable consequence of our capitalist society. Let’s seize the automation and share it among ourselves, and use these productive forces for the good of all humankind instead of just a small clique of owners”
The difference is important, because your proposed solution is a dead end doomed to failure and people will stop listening to communists if your solution is Luddism that fails over and over. You just want to ban AI within the context of capitalism to ameliorate harm within capitalism temporarily. Someone else in another capitalist nation will just surpass you and do it anyway. You will become obsolete and stuck in old technology while the world moves on without you, and you will be frozen in a less advanced form of capitalism still, until it buckles because other capitalists are outcompeting you.
I never proposed a solution, aside from a post-revolutionary hypothetical in another branch of this comment tree. I took issue with what I percieved to be the assertion that Marxists shouldn't analyse and complain about things.
It’s quite clear from the article and your Luddite perspective that you wish to ban, destroy, or otherwise hinder the development of automation
Automation is great, I love automation. But the point of the article is that this AI tech is not automating writing, what it is doing is automating a facsimile of writing, and that to accept the output of these algorithms as equally valid works of art as those made by actual people is a damaging and nihilistic worldview.
If the end consumer cannot tell the difference and interprets the AI-produced facsimile as the real thing, there is no effective difference
Do you truly believe that the purpose of art is to be consumed?
Some of it is, yeah. For example I would have absolutely no qualms with AI generating communist propaganda en masse.
Also you do realize that you can still create art in a communist society even if art made for consumption is mostly automated, right?
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Here's a pretty good article that explains the difference.
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Here's a pretty good article that explains the difference.
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Basing things on what you “want” and not what is actually possible is idealism yeah. AI is coming and there’s nothing we can do about it except seize the infrastructure when the time is right, and use its power for ourselves
Y'all really hate the idea that there might be anything in life that can't be discussed in the language of heavy industry, don't you? Like someone starts talking about feels and it's like "No! YOu fool! You moron! The only things worth caring about are production throughput in tractor factories! How could you possibly care about anything else at all?!?!?!"
I’m just a pragmatist who deals with the actual trends of capitalist economy and society and not just what I feel like I want
A) why are you worried about these things? they live in the deepest and most unsettling parts of the uncanny valley. From an artistic perspective, they're a joke.
B) Material conditions change. You can't pretend them away or waste your time trying to stuff cats back in bags. That way lies the failure of Luddism: it had no answer to the looms beyond their destruction, which meant it was doomed to failure. You have to find a way to use the thing in a just manner, not smash it and expect it to just go away. Luddism's problem isn't that it doesn't identify a real and significant harm, it is that the answer it presents to that problem is the political-economic equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "I can't hear you!"
C) You can feel however you like about a thing. Feeling that way is ultimately unrelated to the conditions and technologies that led to its creation, however, and it isn't cause to pursue a quixotic task.
I'll admit marxists sometimes do this but honestly in this case I don't really see a problem.
This whole anti AI trend is reactionary to the core, it's based on nothing other than "the machines took our jobs" and "machines cannot feel therefore machine art BAD".