TLDR: if the rich succeed in building AI systems that cater fully to their needs through the whole supply chain (i.e. AI can mine and process resources into what they want with no humans needed), then the rich will have no reason to keep anyone else around and can just massacre all the poors.


Recently, the r/singularity subreddit has had several posts which show some class-consciousness, despite they mostly-techbro atmosphere.

The post I’ve linked and reproduced below states a concern I also have with AI:

If we assume that we reach AGI, maybe even super intelligence, then we can expect a lot of human jobs will suddenly become obsolete.

First it could be white collar and tech jobs. Then when robotics catches up, manual labor will soon follow. Pretty soon every conceivable position a human once had can now be taken over by a machine.

Humans are officially obsolete.

What’s really chilling is that, while humans in general will no longer be a necessity to run a government or society, the very few billionaires at the top that helped bring this AI to existence will be the ones who control it - and no longer need anyone else. No military personnel, teachers, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, engineers, no one.

Why should countries exist filled with people when people are no longer needed to farm crops, serve in the military, build infrastructure, or anything else?

I would like to believe that if all of humanities needs can now always be fulfilled (but controlled by a very, very few), those few would see the benefit in making sure everyone lives a happy and fulfilling life.

The truth is though, the few at the top will likely leave everyone else to fend for themselves the second their walled garden is in place.

As the years pass, eventually AI becomes fully self-sustaining - from sourcing its own raw materials, to maintaining and improving its own systems - even the AI does not need a single human anymore (not that many are left at that point).

Granted, it could take a long while for this scenario to occur (if ever), but the way things are shaking out, it’s looking more and more unlikely that we’ll never get to a utopia where no one works unless they want to and everyone’s needs are met. It’s just not possible if the people in charge are greedy, backstabbing, corporate sociopaths that only play nice because they have to at the moment.

I find their argument quite valid, only lacking in the explicit mention of ‘capitalism’.

Once the rich have full-supply-chain-AI, we wouldn’t be able to revolt even if we wanted to. The robotic police force controlled by the rich can just massacre all the poors.

This puts a hard time limit on when revolution needs to occur. After that I guess we need China’s J-36s to save the American proletariat.

  • cimbazarov@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 days ago

    I’ve started contemplating if a butlerian jihad is more likely than a proletarian revolution at this point with how little class conscious there is in America.

    It is interesting to see that even tech-bros can see some of the contradictions in AI. I do feel it’s easier to organize them against AI rather than against billionaires who own it (since in the tech bro mind they are already on the cusp of being one of the billionaires).

    Also if I could indulge in some sci-fi speculation for a bit: what if the “AI takeover” follows one of the stories in I, Robot (the book) where there’s a official who is an AI but it’s not clear to the public that he is, creating this environment of ambiguity. Then we have more “AI’s” masquerading as real people (take the recent event with the AI Instagram profiles) until everyone we are surrounded by is an AI before we even know it.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 days ago

      butlerian jihad is more likely than a proletarian revolution

      This is really funny.

      But on a serious note the ruling class would probably side with the machines. Even if they didn’t the issues of capitalism would still be around after the jihad and people would have a taste for direct action. Capitalism would fall soon after the thinking machines.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 days ago

      I’ve started contemplating if a butlerian jihad is more likely

      I’ve been thinking about this as well recently, or rather, not about if it’s likely but if it may be starting to become necessary. The more i see of “AI” the more i start to fantasize about a global societal mobilization where we smash anything associated with AI, burn anything ever written about it, call it “Forbidden Knowledge” from now till the end of time and establish some sort of Inquisition to make sure it never resurfaces again.

      Haha, no but real talk, i don’t think AI will take over the world Skynet style (that’s probably not in the realm of possibility seeing as what we now call “AI” has very little to do with actual intelligence and is rather just mindless imitation of training data, albeit on a very large scale) but i do think it is really obscene the way it is being used by capitalism to ruin art and entrench corporate control. Yeah, yeah, i know, just a tool and all that, and sure under socialism it could be used for good, but at the moment this particular tool is just making everything shittier in this capitalist dystopia i’m stuck in.

      • cimbazarov@lemmygrad.ml
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        5 days ago

        Luddism part 2.

        I think the question is if AI, as a tool, can make such a quantitative change in productivity that there is a qualitative change in the relations of production. Otherwise it’s just going to be the same as all other increases in productivity this century which sharpen the contradictions of capitalism.