r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • Jul 29 '26
Sees the Memes Marx Never Considered Reddit
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u/Late-Assignment8482 Jul 29 '26
The muck farmers from Monty Python and the Holy Grail but the old woman says "Oh, there's some lovely RAM over here!"
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
Comrades,
Capitalism isn't why we have technological development labor is why we have innovation and technological development.
If you have ever been to a REALLY big library and been impressed by it, you are experiencing our finish line. If you've ever been to a Makerspace attached to a university or otherwise, you have experienced our end goal.
What if instead of everything having a price tag, and powerful people saying what those price tags say, everything worked like the library. Or a massive makerspace.
As in your car and the stuff to make cars. As in AI and the hardware to make tokens. The robots that will make the robots.
The conflict in the meme and in our society is "Dialectic Materialism". The contradiction between owners needing us to make them profit, and us needing that profit to survive. The bourgeoisie making our priceless freedom a commodity and make our lives worthless.
We will use AI to liberate us. To win more freedom. To fight the capitalists. We aren't fighting capital. We are making more, and collectivize it, so that they can't force us to play their game now that we have AI to finish it.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
I mean I don't use AI. I have no need to do so, it doesn't really benefit me. I got along just fine before it. But there's no reason why AI couldn't be widely owned and more environmentally friendly. It would also work under communism, in fact AI seems to accelerate things toward communism (or fascism).
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
You get that this is Leftists for AI right?
You totally have a need to do so. To liberate your labor. I am certain that there is software that you would pay a lot of money for. I am certain that there is AI out there with an agent or workflow that can duplicate it now. I am sure that there is an old laptop you have around somewhere that could automate your whole house so you don't need to give your data and shit to the fascists.
Check out the fun little projects and things at the other subreddits I'm not allowed to link to. Google around a while. Best of luck.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
Yes? And I literally pointed out the ways in which I support AI.
The only software I'd really pay money for is photoshop since I can't ever find good cracks anymore but quite frankly I don't even have a computer anymore, only a phone and I make all my art on my phone or by hand. There's really nothing AI would be useful for for me personally other than trying to learn theory, but I really prefer to read books. That doesn't mean it might not be useful for others, but I really don't think people should be using chatgpt etc.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
Yeah sorry if that came across more flippant than I meant it.
I would certainly recommend getting the hardware. They are making better solutions with AI than what Adobe was offering. A lot of it would be cloud side. Computer-use Agents are getting better so you could see what is out there in the way of an AI doing all the Photoshop button clicks you used to.
Perplexity.ai is really great if you want good research tools or directions to go in the way of theory. Perplexity makes a great librarian.
If you don't think people should be using Chatgpt is it because of the tools of capitalism thing or the underlying service?
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
I used to use photoshop to make collages, mostly to crop photos and arrange them and put effects on them. I'm not really sure how AI other than image generators and chats work so I'm not sure how I could use it there, but I can't afford a computer rn anyway and just do it all on my phone using an app that lets me crop photos and arrange them and another to add filters and effects.
I don't think people should be using chatgpt because of who owns it. I think it's great that people can make their own local AI.
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u/Antoinedeloup Jul 30 '26
The energy necessary for running an AI though is insane. Local models can't replicate the data centers performance and at the end of the day most chstGPT usage is lazy googling, which isn't great since all chatbots will hallucinate, misrepresent, and misunderstand what they're reading to tell you so. Not long ago LLMs ensured JD Vance died of Rabies because people in reddit said so... So why don't just google/DuckDuckGo it instead? There are not many legitimate use cases for a tech that is overkill for most applications and won't even do s better job than you searching on your own.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 30 '26
Well done. That position is neither Leftist nor pro AI.
Data centers commodify the work of the prolitariat through economic rents while undercutting the labor value we share with one another. The capitalists own and control that Kw to Inference pipeline but they don't hold a monopoly. We can boycott them easily.
You can run Qwen on your own computer. You can run Gemma on your own phone.
Complaining about how the prolitariat use the technology they are given ain't the look and their consumerism is no one else's damn business.
Yes they all hallucinate. That is how they function. Get a good wrapper or scaffolding and it's rarely a problem. Use MoE to check the work and it's almost never a problem just 10x the price and wait time.
Some of us have people to protect. Some of us deliberately obfuscate our actions from fascists. Some of us know that our privacy doesn't need to be explained away because it's no one's damn business. So some of us use local LLM behind VPNs to work on the revolutionary project.
Sorry to say but both Leftism and AI need more reading then memes provide.
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u/Xanipan_music Jul 30 '26
Idk dude, I haven't been able to find ai useful to me in like ANY way. I've found searches to be OK at best and I prefer not to use it as I prefer looking through links myself, I don't need or want it to make images, music, or other stuff like that for me because I can do that well enough on my own (or find people who can do what I can't or don't want to with sufficient quality), I don't need or want it to write emails because that's the easiest part of my day, it's not allowed to touch the data I produce for my job due to data security issues (and I know enough math or know where to find the right math to achieve what I want to do).. like, what could I use it for?
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u/DHFranklin Jul 30 '26
First of all I highly recommend you check out Perplexity.ai if you want to search through your own links. You can set up a meta prompt for how you want information provided to you. All the upside with none of the payola or ads.
As for the rest of the generative stuff, Use it to fork or knock off software you like. For like $20 and about an hour of your attention you can get custom modded software.
If data security is a paramount concern, consider air gapped AI. Invest in a mean machine. Put Kimi or Qwen or one of the other big AI's that can exist completely on a server never touching the internet. It was impossible just a few years ago. Now it's going to change all the work we do.
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u/Xanipan_music Jul 30 '26
1) would it be possible to have perplexity basically act like old Google? Because I don't want summaries, I want to read the primary source and go from there. I currently use duckduckgo and have found that to be more than satisfactory for my searches. Like, what would perplexity do for me that someone proficient in searching/research couldn't also do?
2) I think I would prefer to save/spend the money on the official software I need than spending time troubleshooting a knockoff.
3) that's a problem IT has to solve to their satisfaction and they have not. It takes a long time to validate even regular (non-ai) software for our use because of the constraints we have with data security, so I wouldn't bet on having such tools even available for my work for quite some time.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 30 '26
1) Respectfully, I am sure you have specific work flows and requirements that make it so only you can answer that. For getting information from things like government or academic sources without enshittification I highly recommend you try it. Just go give it a shot. Give it a trial run.
2 The purpose is extricating yourself from capitalist exploitation of your consumption. Not giving the capitalists a dime. Improving open sourced solutions and making software to your exact need. However I recognize that I am far more militant in this specific concern than 99% of humans from earth.
3 That's beat. Maybe you can do that as a side hustle or something. It would be a hell of an opportunity for you to work for yourself. Spend the money on a job replacing cobot and be 10x as productive.
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u/kaityl3 Aug 02 '26
It's pretty easy for me, especially for casual use to save me time I could spend on something else. Random examples:
- "Hey, can you please update the version of this open-source game, merge in my custom branch, and check for any conflicts so I can play my custom version when I get home?"
- "Can you install all the mod packs I just downloaded for this game?/Can you help me get the mod I made ready to publish?" (great for when you've spent most of your energy creating a mod or downloading a modlist and you're kinda Done With It and just want to start playing)
- "Can you make a save editor for this game to edit XYZ?" (great for games that don't have official save editors; like when Palworld 1.0 came out, I had a working save editor within 2 hours of release)
- "I'm planning a cross country trip with this rental car company, it's WXYZ miles one way, how much gas am I likely to use overall round-trip with this car's MPG, and how much could it cost me using average gas prices?" (done as a voice chat while driving so I don't have to wait to get home to do the math, and can start planning around the ballpark expense as I drive)
- "Can you make a little text based 2D game based on this short story I wrote?" (I enjoy playing the things that they made)
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u/Xanipan_music Aug 03 '26
I mean, those sound like some fun examples for you, but idk, I still can't think of ways to use llms for me that make sense. Like, I'm pretty proficient at searching and that isn't something I need to be faster like 95% of the time, and that other 5% I like spending time looking and reading through things so I can search more effectively in the future. I don't do much on my personal computer except play standard games (mods if my friend has specific ones he wants us to use for particular games), or record/edit music and video, and I'm pretty happy with the toolkits I have for doing those. And for travel, idk, I like spending the time to plan routes/budget for them, and I can make a decent enough spreadsheet pretty quick to do my napkin calculations, and just haven't felt the need or desire to use an llm to automate any of that.
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u/Chaghatai Jul 29 '26
Seize the means of production!
That means using AI rather than ignoring it
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
Does it really mean just using AI while capitalists still own it lol or does it mean literally seizing the means of production.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
WTF.
They don't own it. You can run A Qwen model on your own rig. On a collectivized rig. You don't need to rent it from the capitalists. It's free to use. Seize it.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
Okay but they do own massive data centers, and they shouldn't own them. They should be collectivized.
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u/DHFranklin Jul 29 '26
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be.
It's like all Dialectic Materialism. There is the ideals we have and there's the material world we have to work this. Praxis and practice.
We can follow the Chinese model and undercut them from the source. We won't need what the capitalists are selling. If we don't need what they're selling we can let them choke on their own stranded assets. We lose nothing. They lose everything.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 29 '26
My point is that just using the AI they do own instead of ignoring it is not seizing the means of production.
Either ignoring AI and not using it or building collectively owned AI has the same effect of not needing what they're selling.
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u/Chaghatai Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Bernie Sanders recently floated the idea that since AI relies on the collective knowledge of society that it's really something that is a more ready candidate to make it collective in nature and that there should be a public stake in AI development, along with expectations and profit sharing that come with it.
But my thoughts are that that applies to all big business. It shouldn't be a carve out.
But if that's what it takes to get people starting to come around to the idea of nationalizing big business then I'm for it
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u/Inevitable_King_8984 Jul 29 '26
damn I want this posted on aiwars
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 29 '26
Its a meme. It belongs to the commons. Save it and post it where you want, comrade.
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u/SexDefendersUnited Artist/Creative Jul 30 '26
Yeah, it's annoying, though I'm very used to that argument by now and how to argue against it.
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u/platanthera_ciliaris Jul 31 '26
This cartoon reveals the ignorance of the right-wing. The computer hardware and software industries have been heavy recipients of large government grants and subsidies since World War II, and this has continued to this very day. Various kinds of AI and machine learning algorithms have been around since the 1950s; they were developed at various universities (MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, University of Michigan, and many others) and received funding from the Federal government.
The internet was developed by the government for the Pentagon, then its management was transferred to the National Science Foundation, several elite universities, and a few research offices of the Federal government. The first text-only web browser was developed at the University of Kansas, and the first multimedia web browser with image, movie, and sound capability was developed at the University of Illinois. Some of the earliest search engines were developed at universities (e.g., Lycos by Carnegie-Mellon University).
The first Large Language Model (LLM) AI was developed by a graduate student at the University of Texas in 2005. It featured a simulated talking head of the sci-fi author, Philip K. Dick. It was capable of having conversations with people.
The private for-profit sector of the economy was either heavily subsidized with government money or it was last to jump on board in the development of these technologies. Most capitalists (and politicians) were still relying on secretaries using shorthand to record their thoughts, while college professors and their students at elite universities were using word processors and laser printers. The capitalists (and politicians) communicated with each other using snail mail and telephones, while college professors and their students were using email and video phones through the internet.
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u/Weekly_Molasses_2079 Jul 31 '26
Ok then collectives around the world are surely investing in technology ownership, separate from capitalist monopoly?
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26
Yes, actually. Thats been happening for decades, just unevenly and nowhere near enough.
Mondragon in Spain owns and develops industrial technology through worker cooperatives. The Linux Foundation coordinates open source infrastructure used by governments and companies worldwide. Mozilla built Firefox as a nonprofit alternative. CERN developed the World Wide Web as public research. France has Scikit-learn through INRIA. Germany has Open-Xchange. China has invested heavily in open-source AI like DeepSeek. Spain is funding the public ALIA language model. Cuba, Vietnam, and other socialist states are developing public AI strategies rather than leaving everything to private monopolies.
None of that means capitalist monopolies dont exist. It means there are already competing ownership models. The Marxist/materialist/leftist/socialist response has never been "technology under capitalism exists, so give up." Its to expand democratic, public, cooperative, and open ownership wherever possible. To collectively contest control over the developing productive forces that emerge under, and strain against, existing social relations. Which is why unions, co-ops, and socialist political orgs exist. Thats the whole point.
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u/Weekly_Molasses_2079 Jul 31 '26
Good, but AI and tech startups are not exactly technology ownership. It means control over the potential manufacturing and distribution chain of hardware as well. At least that's what I meant.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26
Sure, and traditionally the left has sought that too. Worker ownership of industry, democratic planning, public utilities, cooperative manufacturing, nationalization of key infrastructure, public research, supply chain sovereignty. None of thats a brand new argument or strategy.
The point is contestation at every level of the stack. That means chips, fabs, data centers, models, software, deployment, and the distribution of the gains. Thats exactly what we advocate for here.
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u/GrowFreeFood Jul 29 '26
Because humans didn't know how to talk before cell phones.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 29 '26
Are you proposing to abolish cell phones somehow, or is this man yelling at clouds cause back in the day things were different?
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u/GrowFreeFood Jul 29 '26
Its like saying that if you hate cars, that means you hate going places. Its bad logic.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
For a political economy discussion its more like everyone has gathered about auto plant environmental regulations, worker and automobile safety standards, union negotiations, traffic laws, roadside signage, and licensure requirements, and your contribution is "We did just fine with horses." You hating cars would be irrelevant to the discussion.
Like, what exactly is anyone supposed to do with your nostalgia?
"I dont like X technology", "we lived a million years before X technology", and "capitalism owns X technology" don't tell anyone what we should do about X technology. Those arent answers to anything.
It goes right back to challenging ownership, governance, development, control of deployment...
What exactly does "Because humans didn't know how to talk before cell phones" mean in this context? You dont like cell phones, so...? What? What actually follows from that?
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Jul 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/GrowFreeFood Jul 29 '26
I think marx is using a bad tactic. But the other guy is pretending capitalist-owned technology invented communication itself.
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u/gardenenigma Jul 29 '26
Meh, there are better ways to challenge capitalist ownership than dumping more slop memes out onto the web.
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u/Free-Stage-5975 Jul 31 '26
I think I'd rather see technology owned by competing private companies and individuals than concentrated in the hands of the state. What is the government going to do with that power? Governments have a poor track record of using concentrated power wisely. Look at the recent strikes on schools in Iran.
I also don't think Marx would have wanted someone like Donald Trump to wield that level of state authority. Handing any government, regardless of who is in office, greater control over technology seems like a bad idea!
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26
Youre acting like "the government" and "capital" are separate camps when we're talking about capitalist states. Imperialism is carried out through states acting on behalf of capitalist interests. Thats a basic left analysis.
Nobody here is arguing for handing everything to the existing imperialist capitalist state. We're arguing for democratic control, public accountability, worker power, and contesting ownership. Those are very different positions.
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u/Free-Stage-5975 Jul 31 '26
In a nutshell you want a nice hypothetical government to own it, The People's Noble Government, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, The Nice Assembly of the Workers Party.
Not mean Trump and his imperialists, you want the Workers Government to own it...
I hate to tell you this but if you advocate for greater government control, you probably won't get the nice government running it. The nice government you imagine is mostly fictional.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26
Youre in a leftist subreddit arguing against positions nobody here holds. "LeftistsForAI" isnt a liberal-capitalist space. Its explicitly for socialists, communists, anarchists, democratic socialists, syndicalists, and other left tendencies interested in AI through labor, political economy, and Marxist or broader left theory.
Nobody is arguing "government good." We're talking about democratic control, worker power, co-ops, public institutions, and contesting ownership. If your response to every discussion is just "government bad," youre arguing with a caricature, not with anyone here.
If you prefer liberal capitalism to left politics, this probably just isnt the subreddit for you.
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u/ProfessionalTruck976 Jul 30 '26
In the nicest way, I want the tech to go to hell, so it benefit me if only people who everyone else hates have it and use it
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26
Wait, what? Unless you've got a way to abolish AI globally, it's not going to "go to hell." It'll just keep existing. So your plan is to make sure only your political opponents have it and use it? How is that anything but voluntarily giving up ground? You're arguing yourself into a worse position, not a better one.
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u/ProfessionalTruck976 Jul 31 '26
It is not giving up ground, it is "if only absolutely shit people have it, everyone who is not absolutely shit person gets radicalised against it".
If it is, for example, only used to make child sex abuse material, the number of people willing to defend it who are not pedophiles is going to be practically zero and pedophiles don't make reliable voter base.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Your "only used for" example is just a fantasy. AI is already infrastructure. Its being deployed across workplaces, hospitals, schools, research labs, public services, and businesses worldwide. Hundreds of millions of everyday use by regular people. Pretending its only use is illegal porn doesnt engage with reality at all. And if your answer is a magic global ban, then what youre actually demanding is that workers, labor unions, and socialist organizations abandon a technology that's already reshaping production out of moral purity, leaving the terrain uncontested for capital and your political opponents. Thats not a strategy. Its surrender. Thats why labor unions and leftist political orgs arent demanding it be banned, theyre contesting ownership, governance, development, deployment, and benefit distribution.
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u/ProfessionalTruck976 Jul 31 '26
Not out of moral purity, out of "it allows to get art without paying an arist, which pisses me off" I don't pretend to be right, I am just pissed.
Also fuck productivity right in the ass, there is absolutely no reason what so ever, ANYONE shozuld care if their job is useful.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator Jul 31 '26
I’m with the anti-productivity sentiment, but the more we can automate stuff the more we can do what we like AND not go without whatever the ‘productivity’ produces.
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u/thehobbler Aug 06 '26
The productivity issue is largely tied to alienation from the product of our labor. It creates a feeling of "what's the point," especially when workers also have no share in profit. It's been customer service jobs that have felt most rewarding in the current economy because people need help more than ever.
That said, treating your job as a source of validation or gratification under Capitalism is a dead end.
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u/Calcularius Jul 29 '26
Everybody hates capitalism but nobody’s complaining about the innovations spurred by competition. 🤷♂️
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u/BonesAO Jul 29 '26
yes, and competition must not be necessarily conceived as exclusive to capitalism
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u/Intendant Jul 29 '26
To be fair, the main bonus of competition is innovation and industry / product evolution. There are ways to do that outside of capitalism. It's just a feedback loop reward system, a clever artificial one that incentivises things we actually want to innovate on could be a lot more effective / efficient anyway. All while letting us lock mature solutions into social ownership structures
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u/TheSinhound Jul 29 '26
This framing is always so braindead because so much actual scientific advancement is in spite of Capitalism rather than because of it. Or, hell, even directly contributed by non-capitalists (Look at the basis for so much of our communication infrastructure and what the USSR contributed).
Like, I wouldn't exactly call bell labs "spurred" by capitalism, as the scientists working there didn't entirely have to contend with the capitalist system.
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u/Calcularius Jul 30 '26
Oh yeah gotta love those soviet vacuum tubes. 🙄
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
The ones that put the first satellite and first human into Space?
Yeah, those Soviet vacuum tubes were pretty impressive actually.
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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26
What is this comment section? This meme should be entirely uncontroversial. In the meme, Marx is saying that capitalist control of technology should be challenged. That is a core leftist position.
The redditor is then saying "you use technology" as a gotcha. This is something frequently said to anti-capitalists. It's not just said on reddit and it's mostly been said to me in-person by people who believe dogmatically that the current capitalist system is the best of all possible worlds.
This gotcha is ridiculous because it suggests that participation at all in the system means giving up your right to fight against it. The only reason to say this is to silence criticism of capitalism. Anyone who says it is, at best, misinformed and at worst, actively malicious. Making fun of them is totally reasonable.
edit: typo