Good post by David Golumbia on ChatGPT and how miserable it all is :rat-salute-2:

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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!

    • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      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.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        seizure of the technology for our own ends.

        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.

        • drhead [he/him]
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          2 years ago

          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.

          • ssjmarx [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            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.

            • drhead [he/him]
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              2 years ago

              "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.

          • Florist [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The way to square that circle is to say that the jobs it's eliminating are useless lol

            • drhead [he/him]
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              2 years ago

              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?

    • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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.

          • ssjmarx [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            All technology is good all the time and it should always be adopted by society without restriction

            Capital Vol IV

            • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Marx was famously against capitalism developing productive forces. He wanted to destroy it and live in 1800s technology forever, he was Amish

              • ssjmarx [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                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.

                • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 years ago

                  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.

                  • ssjmarx [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    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.

                • drhead [he/him]
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                  edit-2
                  2 years ago

                  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.