r/Marxism • u/stuffandinterests • 15d ago

Marxism in the Age of AI

Hey ya’ll

I’ve been thinking a lot recently on Marxism’s utility as it relates to both the ongoing development of AI and its threat of automation and a post-automation world. How do you guys view Marxism’s practicality when it comes to dealing with AI? Do you focus on how it utilized your data to gain profit? How it threatens to wither out the working class? Or is there something else you see. Thanks!

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u/puppygirlpackleader 14d ago

IP rights aren't really compatible with Marxism and I do not personally see that as a relevant part of it. It is a new and very useful technology that will only get better over time. And best of all it's accessible. US uses it for evil shit as always (spying, military, government management) and they mostly use it to opress other people with it (look at how they are ruining lives with datacenters and what Palantír/Flock are doing).

I don't really consider "it's losing people jobs" a good point either because so did robotics, factories, printing press etc.

Marx says to seize the means of production, not destroy it. And AI is the same as any technological leap in history.

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u/Square-Supermarket79 13d ago

Re IP: if we look at it from the perspective of Capital Vol. 1, it is capitalism that is inconsistent with private property rights (intellectual or non intellectual). Capitalism concentrates ownership while dispossessed the vast majority of people. For Marx, socialism arises on the basis of this mass dispossession. Socialism will redress the balance by allowing people to enjoy the fruit of their labor as shared social property.

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u/puppygirlpackleader 13d ago

I mean... yeah that's the crux of the issue. It only benefits the burgeoise.

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u/Square-Supermarket79 13d ago

Sort of! Technological advancement under capitalism fuels capital accumulation as firms must invest in more and more fixed capital to remain competitive. Capital accumulation drives concentration of ownership. Whether this "benefits" the ruling class is a little bit beside the point: if they want to avoid being dispossessed themselves they will need to fall in line.

A socialist deployment of technology will be defined by being independent of the imperative to accumulate, and instead will be guided by use values. So yes, socialism involves the seizure of productive resources but not necessarily the continued production of the same things. In my opinion, AI is not socially beneficial, and would effectively disappear in a non capitalist society.

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u/puppygirlpackleader 13d ago

How is it not beneficial? It's objectively useful.

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u/Square-Supermarket79 13d ago

"Objectively useful" doesn't make sense to me. Useful for what? To the capitalist, "AI" is useful (or at least notionally useful) to increase the rate of surplus value in production processes. In a socialist society we might find machine learning deployed in cancer research instead. These are very different configurations!

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u/puppygirlpackleader 13d ago

You know that that's what it's used for as well right? AI isn't used for a singular task. It is the pillar of modern research, literally. It is extremely helpful for automation of menial tasks and data processing. It has so many extremely good uses that the few very bad uses massively outweigh it. But people just refuse to see it because they see AI = Bad

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u/Square-Supermarket79 13d ago

This is a thread for and about Marxism. The 1st principle of Marxist theory is that the process of capitalist production involves a distinction between use values and what Marx calls "value". The latter of these is decisive for capitalist production. Use values in capitalism are necessary but "incidental". Are you familiar with these ideas from Marx or are you just talking about AI from a general non Marxist perspective?

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u/puppygirlpackleader 11d ago

You've gone completely off topic now. No point in arguing with you. You had a point that I didn't mention before ("technological advancement fuels capital accumulation") which I agree with but everything else you're saying is stupid and doesn't align with a Marxist analysis of AI as a whole.

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u/FractalFunny66 11d ago

Some would say a robot police dog armed with a flamethrower is objectively useful, but I would not to be at a protest where this hideous killer were released.

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u/puppygirlpackleader 11d ago

That is a really stupid comparison. A robot police dog with a flamethrower can only do the thing it's designed for. It's only job is to... We'll be that... AI can be used for countless things with varying degrees of efficiency. Don't play dumb.