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

  • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
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    2 years ago

    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

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
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      2 years ago

      Actually, Marxists should let capitalists do all the bad things and never oppose them.

      V I Lenin

      • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
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        2 years ago

        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

        • ssjmarx [he/him]
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          2 years ago

          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"

          • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
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            2 years ago

            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.

            • ssjmarx [he/him]
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              2 years ago

              your proposed solution

              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.

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

                It’s quite clear from the article and your Luddite perspective that you wish to ban, destroy, or otherwise hinder the development of automation

                • ssjmarx [he/him]
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                  2 years ago

                  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.

                  • Spectre_of_Z_poster [they/them]
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                    2 years ago

                    If the end consumer cannot tell the difference and interprets the AI-produced facsimile as the real thing, there is no effective difference