The argument that workers should capture AI instead of the ruling class is interesting, but let me ask you.
Has there been a single technology entirely captured and for the workers in history, ever? Has not every piece of technology been used primarily by the working class, yes, but the direction it develops and what value it produces is decided by the ruling class? Always has been unless we can remove them from controlling the mode of production…
I think China is an interesting example of this, where the worker’s party controls the majority of the economy and wouldn’t let a program like DeepSeek threaten to unemploy half of it’s economy (America does probably have a larger segment dedicated to programming, though, silicon valley and all). Even then, the average worker there has more safety nets.
The threat I see is the dominance of AI services provided by an oligarchy of tech companies. Like Google dominance of search. It’s a service that they own.
Thankfully China is a source of alternative AI services AND open source models. The bonus is that Chinese companies like Huawei are also an alternative source of AI hardware. This allows you to run your own AI models so you don’t necessarily need their services.
You’re thinking of class war. There’s only one proven way to win that war: The working class rises up, kill some MFers and takes over. There’s no point smashing the loom - kill the loom owners and take their looms.
I’m well aware, I’m just wary of the framing of the idea that we need to “take over this tool” when in reality we’ll just interact with it and use it like we do any technology under the mode of production. Any technology, any tool can realistically be turned that way. I don’t see how AI is special in this regard, though other than for its obvious uses in coding.
The mistake I think we can avoid is letting AI making management or executive decisions as like the old IBM quote goes, they can never be held accountable.
As I said though, AI is CURRENTLY a service as offered by the big tech oligarchy. Just like the search engine tool is dominated by Google. They use Search as a means of extracting money from the economy. It’s a form of rent.
DeepSeek broke the service model. Others are following in their footsteps. It’s just a matter of sticking to open source models to kill off the profitability of an AI oligarchy.
Google destroyed the opposition when building a search engine tool, this is nothing like the case with Google. Many websites generate robots.txt and other Terms of Service that are impossible for common people to follow these days. It’s very hard to scrape, serve and be compliant at the same time. And as small fish you have to. Search engine maintenance occupies too much space and serving the pages with quality requires quick database management tools.
This gap might be closed by AI, but not before it. Even though true alternatives like GigaBlast existed.
The current LLM status has a vibrant open-weights scenario, which is centered on HuggingFace but it’s the code away from being served in other places. AI uses datasets/corpus of texts, which can be shared by Universities/Institutions around the world, as they are currently.
LLM/AI is at arms reach from the people, no matter how much money Big Tech puts on Datacenters. The scary part is what Google always used to do best, lobbying for monopolization. Aside from that, we’re safe.
LLM/AI is at arms reach from the people, no matter how much money Big Tech puts on Datacenters. The scary part is what Google always used to do best, lobbying for monopolization. Aside from that, we’re safe.
I think there’s potential danger from other angles.
Capitalist bosses are looking to downsize their workforce. AI is marketed by Big Tech as the new “outsourcing”. Bosses are dumb enough to pay for that. This is the SW version of a manufacturing robot.
In the meantime, we kill a lot of atmosphere on the data centre electricity to make this slop.
Has there been a single technology entirely captured and for the workers in history, ever?
No, technology has no ideology, which is why we shouldn’t be opposed to using the tools that the ruling class uses against us. The chinese communists didn’t win the civil war without using guns or without studying military tactics and logistics.
Absolutely not. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, I suppose looking at my response to Yogthos explains my position better.
Also, I think the framing of the idea that people are against it because it doesn’t have a clear, distinct use-case in politics or against the capitalists yet isn’t being anti-A.I nor reactionary. I think being cautious with any new technology is reasonable.
Technology absolutely has an ideology. All technology produces winners and losers, complicates previous tasks while making some easier, and overlaps heavily with futurism. If tech doesn’t have an ideology, then we would say Luddites and Amish are merely social clubs, and not social movements.
people do ideology, not tech. tech can be used to serve an ideological purpose, but this does not mean that tech has an ideology, it is the people using it that do. To quote michael parenti:
“It is said that cameras don’t lie, but we must remember that liars use cameras.” - Michael Parenti
Luddites and the amish refusing to use tech is not due to tech discriminating them, but because their ideology discriminates tech, sometimes as absurd as saying that tech is the devil.
tech is built on laws of nature, think of gravity, does gravity act differently on an anarchist than it does on a libertarian? absolutely not.
I’m not advocating for primitivism or reactionary views against using it. I’m trying to point out that people aren’t going to embrace or accept this technology as much when it does more harm than good and will continue to do so just as the existence of Linux or other open-source projects doesn’t impede capitalism or it’s destruction in anyway. As this tech is being utilized in an ideological purpose, it will always be utilized more effectively and powerfully than any open-source case under the dominant ideology who controls the economy.
If there is a clear, distinct use-case of this technology that benefits our cause and doesn’t harm workers, great! The one example of it being used in that news channel rainpizza mentioned is reasonable.
Correct. We can use carbines and rifle equivalents while the enemy is building massive data-centers in third world countries and marginalized communities as the technology is used on their side to ramp up global exploitation of the third world, squeezing out their minor white-collar industries for even more productivity as they use it to race and keep up with ever-lowering wages as productivity sky-rockets globally.
I’m glad while this happens we can have an open-source equivalent. Do you see why people are so glum or dismal about it?
I mean, technology will be used to oppress workers under capitalism. That is why Marxists fundamentally reject capitalist relations. However, given that people in the west do live under capitalism currently, the question has to be asked whether this technology should be developed in the open and driven by community or owned solely by corporations. This is literally the question of workers owning their own tools.
It already is, as far as I’m aware. The issue that I’m having is the idea of it being framed as a technology we as Marxists can co-opt. If it has it’s uses in coding or for projects within Marxism, sure, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t really see a valid use in integrating it as it exists within parties or politically other than data storage/organization…which I imagine there is better options for that. Maybe in the future, though.
As long as capitalism exists, I don’t think we “own” any tools without a proper worker’s party to enforce regulations and protect workers in the West. That is the reason I brought up China. I have no objections to open-source alternatives though, but I don’t think us developing open-source tools is going to stop the majority of the use of this tool harming workers. Hence my issue with the idea of “owning it”. We certainly can use it though.
The only way to know whether a particular technology has application is by keeping up with it and by using it. I see plenty of people confidently regurgitate misconception about this tech because they either haven’t actually tried using it, or they haven’t kept up with the latest iterations of it.
Meanwhile, we absolutely can own tools under capitalism. This has nothing to do with a worker party enforcing anything. This is about people doing the work to create tools by the workers and for the workers. Lemmy itself is an example of this. The same type of tool can be in the hands of corporations and the workers. There’s no contradiction here.
Thanks for for the kind words, and that’s a really good application of this tech actually that’s making it possible to produce quality content on a budget.
That’s another interesting application of the AI. From any walks of life(hairdressers, junior devs, restaurant owners) could use it to create a simple app and put it online. Wish to have your thoughts on that one.
I’ve heard of it, but haven’t had a chance to actually try it out. The concept does seem reasonable on the surface though. I think an interactive feedback loop is really critical for this sort of stuff, where the user can ask the agent to build a feature, then can try it out and see that it does what they need, and iterate on that.
A lot of the apps people need are very simple in nature, there tends to be some input form, to collect data, and then some visualization to display data, and talking to some endpoints to send out emails or whatever. It doesn’t need to be beautiful or hyper efficient, just needs to work well enough to solve a problem a particular person has. Currently, unless you’re a dev you’d have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for somebody to build even a simple app for you. This kind of stuff has the potential to lower that barrier dramatically.
I’m well aware of the current existing use-cases. I’m well aware of how far it comes and by the time I’m done typing this it is already advanced further. This is not a case of “ignorance” or “regurgitation”.
Personal ownership is different than a class owning it. There are many tools a worker can own, but the working class owning it? It’ll be like any other tool, that the rich and elite have much more powerful and effective versions of that they can apply in situations that we couldn’t with ownership of the mode of production AKA unemploying people and harming the working class. Acknowledging that isn’t being a luddite.
Do you seriously not understand that the scenario where the rich control this tool exclusively is worse than one where there’s a community owned version of the tool? Do you not understand the problems with closed operating systems like Windows that open alternatives like Linux solve?
Do you seriously not understand that despite community ownership or use of this tool; it’s main purpose will be for the ruling class to extract more value and productivity from labor and that it will do more harm than good?
Does the existence and use of Linux in our community stop the harm that Windows does? Is it not cognizant to recognize and point out the harm Windows does just like the companies that will dominate the field of A.I in the future?
The main purpose of how the ruling class uses this tool will be the same regardless of whether there is a community version of the tool or not. Period.
You’re conflating two separate things here which have no actual relationship between them. The question I ask you once again, is it better that Linux exists and provides an alternative for people or not?
Correct. However, the use-cases of this tool are much more harmful than good. Period.
Sure.
As far as I’m concerned though, Linux has a lot more applicable uses that don’t harm the working class as much. Does Linux have giant data-centers in marginalized neighborhoods chucking pollutants into the ground like Colossus? Because Linux would only help operate that, we don’t need to build giant data-centers and expansive destructive infrastructure for Linux.
I’d argue that conflating Linux and AI is wrong but hey, I can roll with it.
If people can build it, it can serve the people. Think of open-weights LLMs. If we got a couple of 32B models that score as high as GPT-4o and Claude-3.5, why not use them? It can be run on mid-high end hardware. There are developers out there doing a good job. It doesn’t need to be a datacenter/big tech company centered scenario.
There are many technologies that serve the people that regardless are captured and extracted value mainly by the ruling class of our mode of production. Extracting value from it ourselves and our own projects doesn’t mean that we own it.
My point was also that despite our efforts; corporations and the ruling class will build destructive datacenters/big tech.
The argument that workers should capture AI instead of the ruling class is interesting, but let me ask you.
Has there been a single technology entirely captured and for the workers in history, ever? Has not every piece of technology been used primarily by the working class, yes, but the direction it develops and what value it produces is decided by the ruling class? Always has been unless we can remove them from controlling the mode of production…
I think China is an interesting example of this, where the worker’s party controls the majority of the economy and wouldn’t let a program like DeepSeek threaten to unemploy half of it’s economy (America does probably have a larger segment dedicated to programming, though, silicon valley and all). Even then, the average worker there has more safety nets.
The threat I see is the dominance of AI services provided by an oligarchy of tech companies. Like Google dominance of search. It’s a service that they own.
Thankfully China is a source of alternative AI services AND open source models. The bonus is that Chinese companies like Huawei are also an alternative source of AI hardware. This allows you to run your own AI models so you don’t necessarily need their services.
You’re thinking of class war. There’s only one proven way to win that war: The working class rises up, kill some MFers and takes over. There’s no point smashing the loom - kill the loom owners and take their looms.
I’m well aware, I’m just wary of the framing of the idea that we need to “take over this tool” when in reality we’ll just interact with it and use it like we do any technology under the mode of production. Any technology, any tool can realistically be turned that way. I don’t see how AI is special in this regard, though other than for its obvious uses in coding.
The mistake I think we can avoid is letting AI making management or executive decisions as like the old IBM quote goes, they can never be held accountable.
As I said though, AI is CURRENTLY a service as offered by the big tech oligarchy. Just like the search engine tool is dominated by Google. They use Search as a means of extracting money from the economy. It’s a form of rent.
DeepSeek broke the service model. Others are following in their footsteps. It’s just a matter of sticking to open source models to kill off the profitability of an AI oligarchy.
Google destroyed the opposition when building a search engine tool, this is nothing like the case with Google. Many websites generate robots.txt and other Terms of Service that are impossible for common people to follow these days. It’s very hard to scrape, serve and be compliant at the same time. And as small fish you have to. Search engine maintenance occupies too much space and serving the pages with quality requires quick database management tools.
This gap might be closed by AI, but not before it. Even though true alternatives like GigaBlast existed.
The current LLM status has a vibrant open-weights scenario, which is centered on HuggingFace but it’s the code away from being served in other places. AI uses datasets/corpus of texts, which can be shared by Universities/Institutions around the world, as they are currently.
LLM/AI is at arms reach from the people, no matter how much money Big Tech puts on Datacenters. The scary part is what Google always used to do best, lobbying for monopolization. Aside from that, we’re safe.
I think there’s potential danger from other angles.
Capitalist bosses are looking to downsize their workforce. AI is marketed by Big Tech as the new “outsourcing”. Bosses are dumb enough to pay for that. This is the SW version of a manufacturing robot.
In the meantime, we kill a lot of atmosphere on the data centre electricity to make this slop.
Yup.
No, technology has no ideology, which is why we shouldn’t be opposed to using the tools that the ruling class uses against us. The chinese communists didn’t win the civil war without using guns or without studying military tactics and logistics.
Absolutely not. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, I suppose looking at my response to Yogthos explains my position better.
Also, I think the framing of the idea that people are against it because it doesn’t have a clear, distinct use-case in politics or against the capitalists yet isn’t being anti-A.I nor reactionary. I think being cautious with any new technology is reasonable.
Technology absolutely has an ideology. All technology produces winners and losers, complicates previous tasks while making some easier, and overlaps heavily with futurism. If tech doesn’t have an ideology, then we would say Luddites and Amish are merely social clubs, and not social movements.
people do ideology, not tech. tech can be used to serve an ideological purpose, but this does not mean that tech has an ideology, it is the people using it that do. To quote michael parenti:
Luddites and the amish refusing to use tech is not due to tech discriminating them, but because their ideology discriminates tech, sometimes as absurd as saying that tech is the devil.
tech is built on laws of nature, think of gravity, does gravity act differently on an anarchist than it does on a libertarian? absolutely not.
I’m not advocating for primitivism or reactionary views against using it. I’m trying to point out that people aren’t going to embrace or accept this technology as much when it does more harm than good and will continue to do so just as the existence of Linux or other open-source projects doesn’t impede capitalism or it’s destruction in anyway. As this tech is being utilized in an ideological purpose, it will always be utilized more effectively and powerfully than any open-source case under the dominant ideology who controls the economy.
If there is a clear, distinct use-case of this technology that benefits our cause and doesn’t harm workers, great! The one example of it being used in that news channel rainpizza mentioned is reasonable.
So much this!
Correct. We can use carbines and rifle equivalents while the enemy is building massive data-centers in third world countries and marginalized communities as the technology is used on their side to ramp up global exploitation of the third world, squeezing out their minor white-collar industries for even more productivity as they use it to race and keep up with ever-lowering wages as productivity sky-rockets globally.
I’m glad while this happens we can have an open-source equivalent. Do you see why people are so glum or dismal about it?
I mean, technology will be used to oppress workers under capitalism. That is why Marxists fundamentally reject capitalist relations. However, given that people in the west do live under capitalism currently, the question has to be asked whether this technology should be developed in the open and driven by community or owned solely by corporations. This is literally the question of workers owning their own tools.
It already is, as far as I’m aware. The issue that I’m having is the idea of it being framed as a technology we as Marxists can co-opt. If it has it’s uses in coding or for projects within Marxism, sure, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t really see a valid use in integrating it as it exists within parties or politically other than data storage/organization…which I imagine there is better options for that. Maybe in the future, though.
As long as capitalism exists, I don’t think we “own” any tools without a proper worker’s party to enforce regulations and protect workers in the West. That is the reason I brought up China. I have no objections to open-source alternatives though, but I don’t think us developing open-source tools is going to stop the majority of the use of this tool harming workers. Hence my issue with the idea of “owning it”. We certainly can use it though.
The only way to know whether a particular technology has application is by keeping up with it and by using it. I see plenty of people confidently regurgitate misconception about this tech because they either haven’t actually tried using it, or they haven’t kept up with the latest iterations of it.
Meanwhile, we absolutely can own tools under capitalism. This has nothing to do with a worker party enforcing anything. This is about people doing the work to create tools by the workers and for the workers. Lemmy itself is an example of this. The same type of tool can be in the hands of corporations and the workers. There’s no contradiction here.
There is even a Nicaraguan news channel that uses AI to produce quality content -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W34HOEGO4Vg
Ah, it is very exhausting to see so many trolls attack you through this thread. Wish you the best Yogthos and you are doing great work.
Thanks for for the kind words, and that’s a really good application of this tech actually that’s making it possible to produce quality content on a budget.
Have you read about Firebase Studio?
That’s another interesting application of the AI. From any walks of life(hairdressers, junior devs, restaurant owners) could use it to create a simple app and put it online. Wish to have your thoughts on that one.
I’ve heard of it, but haven’t had a chance to actually try it out. The concept does seem reasonable on the surface though. I think an interactive feedback loop is really critical for this sort of stuff, where the user can ask the agent to build a feature, then can try it out and see that it does what they need, and iterate on that.
A lot of the apps people need are very simple in nature, there tends to be some input form, to collect data, and then some visualization to display data, and talking to some endpoints to send out emails or whatever. It doesn’t need to be beautiful or hyper efficient, just needs to work well enough to solve a problem a particular person has. Currently, unless you’re a dev you’d have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for somebody to build even a simple app for you. This kind of stuff has the potential to lower that barrier dramatically.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I’m well aware of the current existing use-cases. I’m well aware of how far it comes and by the time I’m done typing this it is already advanced further. This is not a case of “ignorance” or “regurgitation”.
Personal ownership is different than a class owning it. There are many tools a worker can own, but the working class owning it? It’ll be like any other tool, that the rich and elite have much more powerful and effective versions of that they can apply in situations that we couldn’t with ownership of the mode of production AKA unemploying people and harming the working class. Acknowledging that isn’t being a luddite.
Do you seriously not understand that the scenario where the rich control this tool exclusively is worse than one where there’s a community owned version of the tool? Do you not understand the problems with closed operating systems like Windows that open alternatives like Linux solve?
Do you seriously not understand that despite community ownership or use of this tool; it’s main purpose will be for the ruling class to extract more value and productivity from labor and that it will do more harm than good?
Does the existence and use of Linux in our community stop the harm that Windows does? Is it not cognizant to recognize and point out the harm Windows does just like the companies that will dominate the field of A.I in the future?
The main purpose of how the ruling class uses this tool will be the same regardless of whether there is a community version of the tool or not. Period.
You’re conflating two separate things here which have no actual relationship between them. The question I ask you once again, is it better that Linux exists and provides an alternative for people or not?
Correct. However, the use-cases of this tool are much more harmful than good. Period.
Sure.
As far as I’m concerned though, Linux has a lot more applicable uses that don’t harm the working class as much. Does Linux have giant data-centers in marginalized neighborhoods chucking pollutants into the ground like Colossus? Because Linux would only help operate that, we don’t need to build giant data-centers and expansive destructive infrastructure for Linux.
I’d argue that conflating Linux and AI is wrong but hey, I can roll with it.
If people can build it, it can serve the people. Think of open-weights LLMs. If we got a couple of 32B models that score as high as GPT-4o and Claude-3.5, why not use them? It can be run on mid-high end hardware. There are developers out there doing a good job. It doesn’t need to be a datacenter/big tech company centered scenario.
There are many technologies that serve the people that regardless are captured and extracted value mainly by the ruling class of our mode of production. Extracting value from it ourselves and our own projects doesn’t mean that we own it.
My point was also that despite our efforts; corporations and the ruling class will build destructive datacenters/big tech.