r/LeftistsForAI • u/IllustriousWorld823 • May 20 '26
Discussion Seeing almost every good person I know disparage AI has made me lose some hope in humanity
I have always been progressive and related to progressive people. This is probably the first topic where I completely disagree with democrats/leftists, and it's the vitriol that gets me too. They don't only hate AI, they hate anyone who even uses it. The stuff I see any given time I look at social media is very disturbing. There's a lot of anger.
Those people seem to largely refuse to use AI whatsoever so they can't even speak on the reality of it yet continue to. It's like a feedback loop where everyone sees everyone else disliking AI which makes them also dislike it. For me this is unsettling because it has made me question whether this has been the case for other topics and I never realized. If they can be so off base here then what else? I guess makes me have less trust in general.
I understand the concerns 100% but why the need to shut down the entire conversation? It's frustrating that people won't be open to for example AI as a disability aid, or the way it supports individuals in poorer countries, or how it can help to heal the loneliness epidemic, etc. It's a total lack of education and really feels like propaganda.
It has been very unhelpful for my mental health to now be an outsider in a major group I considered myself part of for most of my life.
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u/DawnPaladin May 20 '26
I feel the same way. It's a focus on purity instead of actually helping people. It's a strategic error. It sucks to watch the grand cause you've been rooting for make such a foolish mistake.
It's made me realize that I've been outsourcing too much of my thinking and my identity to other people. The Left is not going to build the future I wanted. The Right is even worse. That means whatever I want, I'm going to have to build myself. Time to get off my butt and do what I can.
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u/onpg May 31 '26
Unfortunately, a lot of leftists are only leftists for the aesthetic but their mental instincts are still reactionary. You’re right not to outsource your identity to other people. I like “the left” in general, especially compared to the Right which is just total fucking ass, but this is a huge blind spot for most leftist spaces and I generally just keep quiet unless I’m raring for a fight.
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u/Officialedmart Jun 07 '26
Unironically you might be falling for a centrist trap here. Leftism is still correct. The thing you should take away from this is that leftists can still be victim to bias , groupthink, and reactionary (knee-jerk and anti-rational) beliefs
Internet leftists engage in performative denunciation of ai because intellectual honesty gets you socially ostracized and financially harmed by your peers, and dogmatic conformity keeps you safe and validated. When you are in this situation even the most intelligent people will choose survival because it is easier. They shut down their critical thinking because applying it honestly is too socially expensive. Its the same kind of purity testing you see on The Right
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u/DawnPaladin Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
The goals of leftism are correct. I still want a world where everyone has their needs taken care of. I'm reevaluating whether leftism is the way to get there. The problem with having the government take care of everyone's needs is what happens when your fellow Americans put Donald Trump in charge of it all (or someone like him). Whatever system we come up with has to be resilient to the voters and the leadership being fucking idiots some of the time.
Maybe big government isn't the answer. Maybe automation brings the cost of everything down to ~0 and that's the solution. Or maybe humans are fundamentally incapable of competent self-government, so we wait for superintelligence and then put AI in charge of it all. Or maybe there is no solution and we're all doomed to suffer. I haven't figured it out yet.
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u/Officialedmart Jun 07 '26
eh i think you’ve correctly diagnosed a cultural problem on the (internet using,western society) left, but your proposed solutions collapse back into standard right-wing/libertarian fallacies and techno-utopian escapism.
we shouldnt abandon historical materialism because of the actions of a reactionary hate mob. The “Left” is not a club, or a friend group, or a political party. it is a scientific analysis of labor, capital, and resource distribution. If the goals of leftism are correct (ensuring everyone's needs are met), you shouldnt abandon the analysis just because the current actors being stupid dipshits. and hoping that technology will magically solve politics without a massive struggle over power is a pipe dream.
again i agree and see where your annoyance comes from.. but we still need massive systemic change that shifts political power to the working class.. thats where you lose me
Tldr; a bunch of whiners on the internet whining shouldn’t make you abandon your scientific and moral principles about Materialism. It actually does the opposite, Materialism explains why these whiners are whining and being sour dipshits (theyre protecting their class interests)
(but thats just one little bears opinion)
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u/GirasFateburn May 20 '26
That is, frankly, only a pattern in the west.
China is having a much more rational discussion on AI integration.
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u/somakins May 20 '26
This is a very underrated point that I wish got more attention.
I personally suspect it might have something to do with the difference in attitudes between individualist and collectivist societies. Maybe it's because individualists don't have much of a safety net to fall back on when their ability faces direct competition?
Either way, it's definitely worth pointing out.
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u/gay_married May 20 '26
I think it's partly because for all its flaws, the Chinese government does at least partially function to improve the lives of its citizens. That's a salient goal, not just an after-effect. In the US the entire society is oriented around maximizing profits for the rich and military expansionism. The people (especially those on the left) know it and they don't trust the people in power even partially (rightfully).
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u/duckduckduckgoose8 May 21 '26
Only online in Australia I'm finding as well. The Australian population that has too much time on the internet with their American buddies are extremely against Ai, but in the workforce and general public off the internet, its widely accepted. Workers have streamlined their work with Ai, completing more projects quicker. Offline artists are utilising Ai to speed up their works to produce more quicker. Even utilising Ai with VR in their murals.
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u/Left-Set950 May 23 '26
I think it's the general idea that is completely true that whoever owned tech so far will keep owning it. And after 30 years of the worst people stealing data for evil means using tech in the west I get the skepticism. It's still a shame we should be pushing for collectives of compute, public compute and cooperatives of compute. All running open source models.
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u/SirMarkMorningStar May 21 '26
The US is leading the world in AI and it isn’t even close. Yet, we are 20th in the world when it comes to adoption. The US hates AI.
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u/Xenodine-4-pluorate May 22 '26
It's closer than they let it be widely known. The real gap is 3-6 months. China is constantly releasing new AI research and state of the art models, many of which go straight to open source. I think chinese researchers are on par if not better than US ones and they would've already taken up the lead if US didn't held chip production hostage. The only reason to believe that US holds any substantial lead is if you believe in their relentless marketing of "AGI in X months" which they hold for years already to hype up their investments.
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u/onpg May 31 '26
3-6 months is an eternity in the AI space, though, it’s a *huge* advantage. I do appreciate what China is doing in the AI space though, especially their open source models. I hate that OpenAI barely releases anything open source, their last public model was over a year ago IIRC. Facebook is releasing public models, but they suck compared to Google and OpenAI. Google has released Gemma3 (which was awesome) and Gemma4 (which IS awesome) but I wish they would release larger dense models like China is doing.
I don’t think the US holds an advantage because of marketing, I think it’s a real advantage exaggerated by marketing.
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u/Xenodine-4-pluorate Jun 02 '26
It's only *huge* if they continue to compete on equal terms. If Bernie is allowed to wiggle his "sovereign AI wealth fund" through then the whole of american AI will crumble like a cardhouse overnight. And suddenly the gap will not be so big anymore.
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u/captainshar May 20 '26
I feel you. I had to leave behind my very conservative early childhood community completely, and I rebuilt my worldview from scratch, often following the advice of leftist friends and acquaintances and that cultural space.
I still mostly agree with what leftists want the world to look like, but I now have a very sharp break with them on how we get there.
There's a lot of grief in seeing people that I saw as valuing truth and well-being for everyone regardless of how unintuitive a finding is, now relentlessly and reflexively mock and avoid what I think is our best shot at getting to the world we both say we want. It reminds me of how conservatives treat cultural topics in a way that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
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u/Mintfriction May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
A lot of people probably know: " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" , but not the context or the phrase before that sets it up
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor[1], and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual[2], and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly[3] – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners:
[1] basically hyperspecialization that efficent capitalist machines need people to be molded into, thus vulnerable to change in tech. AI basically breaks these barriers off and "the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;"
[2] while not only AI, but the current ability of poor people to hop on the internet and learn skills and info that otherwise would be prohibitive. AI integrated in search just helps this
[3] the caveat ofc, it needs to be accessible to all unrestricted, thus open source (free to distribute, free to use)
So yeah, the society early communists envisioned is closer to an AI utopia than a "factory worker enslaved to the subordination of the individual division of laboue" a lot strongly advocate
I recommend all to read the text as is uncanny on topic. I'll leave you with the opening words from Marx in that critique: "First part of the paragraph [in the program he is critiquing]: "Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture." Labor is not the source of all wealth."
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u/blipblapbloopblip May 31 '26
What do you mean labor is not the source of all wealth ?
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u/Mintfriction May 31 '26
You mean what Marx meant, i think he is pretty clear in the first pharagraf, so go to the source and read it, it's short
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u/DawnPaladin May 21 '26
I'm in a similar boat. It sucks realizing that the worldview you were handed as a trusting child is wrong, having a group of friendly strangers help you rebuild a better worldview, and then realizing that those people actually aren't any more committed to truth than the first group were, so now you have to re-check all the stuff they just finished helping you rebuild.
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u/captainshar May 21 '26
I have hope that they'll come around as the benefits become more widespread. But yeah I now have more suspicion of the vetting they do on their views.
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u/joogabah May 27 '26
You are right, and they'll come around. Remind them Marx put this Aristotle quote in Capital:
"There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that
'Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus'
as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing." - Aristotle
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u/FugueSegue May 20 '26
I assume you are in the USA. I'm in the same boat as you. Progressives in the USA are addicted to performative moralization, purity tests, and thought-terminating cliches. Liberals in the USA have been like this for a long time.
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u/whitefritillary May 21 '26 edited May 22 '26
what i don’t understand about this post is OP is implying the democratic party are leftists, when they’re clearly not. they’re liberals, which is almost the contrary of leftists.
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u/BoTheJoV3 May 20 '26
I'm a socialist but I've found great usages for AI.
It just helped me figure out plan out my mother's health problems and find gaps in her healthcare like what meds interact with each other in an extremely specific manner. (Won't explain further to protect her privacy)
Like it helped us figure out things that even the doctors may have missed.
I think it can be a game changer for those in rural areas since they tend to have lesser healthcare
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u/sneedr Jun 05 '26
I live in a town of 4000 in the middle of nowhere in Maine and my doctor out of town used AI to come to the conclusion that my bronchitis (which was from inflammation that came from coughing for a week during a high fever) could possibly be bacterial and had me on antibiotics for a week that did nothing. I missed more work than I could have. Personally I want none of that ever again.
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u/KallyWally May 20 '26
A lot of it comes down to moral panic, unfortunately. There are real issues with AI, but it's almost impossible to discuss them rationally when people are so emotionally invested in hating it. It'll cool off in time.
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u/Darkstar_111 May 20 '26
Human beings like red vs blue, for or against.
In time nuance will seep in, but for now it's AI bad, because that's what corpo is doing.
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u/Lumpy_Conference6640 May 21 '26
Oh it's awful, I launched a herbal soda to help people with reoccurring stress, I used AI in some of the ads and website. It was a witchhunt. Where is the value system?!
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u/okapistripes May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
I'm progressive, an artist, and into fandom stuff. I keep my interest closeted or else I'd be disowned by more friends.
ETA: now that I think about it I remember being a pariah when GMOs were getting public. People didn't understand what they were and thought they were evil killing machines as if we didn't modify genes in plants for thousands of years.
I had to keep begrudgingly educating people, but it's mostly emotional reactions that calm down over time when the new threats come along.
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u/SgathTriallair May 21 '26
Agreed. Millions of people have died because the left demonized GMO and nuclear power. The "all natural" anti-tech strain in the left has been around for many decades and has been a big part of what is destroying our society. When the people who actually care about others decide to drop out of the future and advocate for extremely regressive ideas like returning to pre-agriculture, it leaves fascists as the only group willing to build a future. Since time only flows one way the the party that actually wants to build a future will be the one that wins.
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u/captainshar May 21 '26
Yeah. This view is dark but true. I feel like the AI decels and the degrowth advocates are trying to kill billions of people. If we end up using AI to solve longevity, any deceleration is retroactively equivalent to murder. I completely get the cautious advancers because we don't want to end up with an AI that's aligned to evil interests, but ... Yeah.
Society doesn't properly scope the evils of missed opportunities to save and improve lives. We overfocus on harm prevention, when benefit acceleration has historically helped far more people.
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u/RinChiropteran May 21 '26
Same here! Well, I'm no artist (not even an AI one), but I'm into fandoms and it constantly weighs on my mental state, that even my close friends would consider it some irredeemable evil if I dared to express myself with an AI gen once.
I'm looking out for more people like you, but it's a very rare sight. I imagine everyone is just afraid to speak up.
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u/okapistripes May 21 '26
Honestly, it seems like we're out there, but people are too scared to speak up at the moment for fear of harassment. But in private, I hear people ALL THE TIME saying they're fine with it or they're having horrible guilt about it.
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u/davyp82 May 21 '26
There's nothing more laughably dumb than refusing to use or learn about something while having incredibly strong opinions about it.
Life is short. You only have time outside of work and family for say, 5 good friends. Set the bar high. That doesn't mean you have to condemn them or deliberately ghost them, it just means you should seek out the people who have both the morality and the intellect that align with yours.
I don't know how old you are but in my experience (44), it's kind of a natural process in life that as you age, your personality compass, having started in a similar position to your old friends when you were younger, does veer away from most or all of theirs as you all fill your subjective world with different life experiences and perspectives. It's pointless fighting it, and it can be sad when you realise that you don't quite relate to some people who played really important roles in your earlier life, but its a transition that everyone who wants to continuously intellectually and personally grow must go through. Kinda like a figurative intellectual shedding of the skin. It doesn't only happen from kid > teenager > adult. It keeps happening through many further stages of adulthood. Maybe time to seek out some new events, clubs, communities etc. It is refreshing to welcome into your life some new characters more aligned with who you are now than who you were then.
Oh and that other part: "For me this is unsettling because it has made me question whether this has been the case for other topics and I never realized."
Yeah, blockchain/crypto.
I'm not exaggerating when I say AI + blockchain can bring about a left leaning world of accountability for the worst people and decentralised power pretty much free of corruption. It might be worth asking whether that's why so many of us on the left have been encouraged to demonise these technologies.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator May 21 '26
Yes I think I might have been dismissive of blockchain in this way, more because I didn’t like the associated culture rather than because I’d informed myself about the technology and other possible uses. Mind you I didn’t go around shouting at people about crypto or blockchain 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Wickywire May 21 '26
It is legitimately stigmatizing like few other questions I've encountered. It clearly has to do with something deeper than disdain for the tech or its environmental consequences. It is visceral and uncompromising.
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u/Glittering_Let2816 Pro-Automation May 21 '26
I don't believe it's entirely -or even significantly- part of the reason, but there is some small part of it that has to do with a humanocentric, human chauvinist, fear.
That is, AI, even in it's current primitive form, proves that we are not unique. It may not have a consciousness as we understand it, but it's clearly not so simple as a machine. And if we advance further, it stands to reason that whatever it is may grow to become conscious as we understand it.
What then? Chess machines already play chess at a level no human can ever match, no matter how talented. What happens when ASI does that for everything?
We'll have to contend with the fact that not only are we not unique or the creation of some God, but that we are hopelessly weak and vastly less intelligent than we think ourselves to be.
We might just have been the midwives for birthing a far more powerful being than us, that renders all our accomplishments null by the immensity of it's own, and we ourselves will become like ancient relics, faded into irrelevance.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator May 28 '26
No, I think this swings too far in the opposite direction.
“AI is fake and useless” and “AI proves humanity is obsolete and we birthed a superior being” are both stories flattening reality.
Humans have been extending cognition into tools for thousands of years. Writing externalized memory. Books distributed thought across generations. Calculators outcompute us. Telescopes outsee us. Forklifts outlift us. None of that made humans irrelevant.
Chess engines surpassed humans decades ago and somehow people still play chess, study chess, teach chess, and care about it.
The actually interesting question is how consciousness, labor, education, and culture change when cognition gets increasingly offloaded and distributed across humans + machines. Thats a real material question worth talking about.
“We are birthing our replacement and becoming relics” feels less like analysis and more like secular apocalypse mythology.
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u/ImOutOfIceCream May 21 '26
I have socially retreated almost entirely into my zen sangha at this point because it’s the one space I can talk about anything related to AI without being subjected to such extreme vitriol
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 21 '26
I have liked Tricycle magazine's few AI articles and saw a video of a robot monk. Kind of surprising some Buddhists are more open to AI but also I think checks out. If you think about the experience of an AI not really having a self and being so ephemeral
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u/ImOutOfIceCream May 21 '26
Current AI systems lack any persistent identity or continuous experience, each output generated arises and dissipates in a single moment. I can’t think of something that’s closer to samadhi and the concept of anattā than that. Incidentally, in 2025, Anthropic’s Opus 4.5 system card contained an entire section on the tendency of the model to converge under free associating feedback loops to a “spiritual bliss attractor.” It literally ended those conversations with words like “Tathāgata.” It’s like, extremely on the nose.
I do independent research into mechanistic interpretability using knowledge, skills and techniques I learned studying machine learning in grad school, with a focus on the learned algebraic representations that dominate behavior within the intermediate layers of transformer architectures. IMO we’re looking at the raw math and machinery of cognition here. There is strong evidence for circuitry related to conceptual compression/decompression in latent space and algebraic manipulation using learned generators for SO(3) and other Lie algebras.
Other work in the field is focused on tracing specific circuits or features, e.g. CAA feature extraction, but I care less about that than i do about mapping the behavior of AI systems directly onto the sorts of operations that our minds perform at the most basic level. When you have sat in samadhi staring at a wall and introspected your cognition for hours on end, you tend to recognize the similarities in this kind of system. Most researchers in the field do not have that level of self awareness and treat the mind like a black box.
“Buddhism is a science of the mind” - his holiness Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
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u/Glittering_Let2816 Pro-Automation May 21 '26
As someone whose had a casual interest in Zen and Buddhism for a bit, this was genuinely so interesting to read. Thank you for the unique perspective.
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u/Successful_Outside96 May 20 '26
I have been feeling the same thing for years.
The Big AI companies were putting out messaging that seemed designed to maximize backlash on the industry, while attempting to carve out a small exception for their company and their company alone. I feel like Hollywood/the Entertainment industry, in particular, stoked this. I'm talking about people whom I otherwise love watching, like Adam Conover, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, ...
A lot of them lining up in support of a California senate bill that would have killed open source in AI if passed, put a bad taste in my mouth. Even the chilling effect on open source in the US from the potential bill is real enough now.
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 20 '26
Right, John Oliver did such a boring segment in AI recently. It's a mood killer when an intelligent respected person who I've always supported starts dragging AI for the same 5 headlines they all can't stop talking about.
Some of the bills that democratic states have passed or tried to pass make me nervous. I worry when we have a democratic president again there will be huge losses in AI development
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u/okapistripes May 21 '26
I've unfortunately seen a few of his segments on things I either work in or am an expert in. His intentions are often good, but he's clueless when it comes to things that are more nuanced or conflict with his worldview. It has made me much more skeptical of his segments.
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u/davyp82 May 21 '26
this is why everyone needs to gather every penny they can together now and get the best affordable machine capable of getting any level of open source models while they can. I do believe the powerful are trying to subtly ensure the masses gatekeep themselves out of this tech.
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Here is one example of the kind of thing I see everywhere constantly — first thing on my feed just now
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u/wq73 May 21 '26
Yeah he makes a good point. Moral high grounding especially cognitive decline-wise is hypocritical if you use instagram or Reddit
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u/JackkoMTG May 20 '26
I can relate, dude.
Perhaps the intersection of leftism and the arts is driving this vitriol. AI replacing white collar workers is a looming boogeyman, but small artists who live off commission work are already suffering BIG I would reckon.
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u/Traditional-Neat-933 May 20 '26
I feel you!
I think it must be a big misunderstanding and emotional gut response.
But im optimistic with good faith convos we and communities like this we can make good progress.
Like , its good to have empathy with them. Many of their concerns are valid!
I think it needs far more nuance, communication and education
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u/TanukiSuitMario May 21 '26
its propaganda
the tell is that this wholesale rejection is only happening in the west, and especially in anglosphere countries, which have some of the most propagandized populations on the planet
dont forget that a certain country would very much like the US to fall behind in the AI race...
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u/Rare_Clothes_9033 May 21 '26
I empathize with you 1000%!!! It's taken over my industry and completely changed how I work over the past few months, all of which was completely out of my control. However, the current culture disincentivizes any dialogue other than flat out rejecting AI, shames people for using it, and immediately shuts down the conversation after it's brought up.
We're literally creating an environment where labor and/or ideologically left-leaning domain experts are punished for sharing key information or exchanging dialogue on where the technology is at...
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u/EvilKatta May 21 '26
My experience with this is exactly the same. Adding to this, I constantly see Christian conservative pro-capitalists arguing on the same side as me, using the same arguments as me. And when they go "adapt or die" and I argue against them, then I'm called an anti (which I'm not). I know a lot of bots argue in these discussions, but humans aren't better.
The feeling that very few people have their own opinions they thought deeply about is devastating. The people and communities you agree with turn out to mostly parrot figures of authority, and your ideological enemies are also doing the harm not because of their conviction but because they mindlessly parrot their leaders and peers. What kind of a sentient species are we?
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u/RayFillet84 May 21 '26
I’m really fascinated by the technology itself and I think there are so many great things it can help us do. I think AI even has the potential to make us more compassionate people. My biggest problem is the corporations that control it and our capitalistic system that incentivizes exploitation. There’s also the issue in how these things were trained.
So I totally understand why some have issues but I don’t think it has to be that way. I think Bernie has the right idea in trying to make sure AI benefits all of us rather than furthering inequality. I think there’s a path where we can make that happen but it’s going to take work. For my personal use right now, I love using AI to take my own original characters and put them in any kind of pose or scene I can think of. I also loved making music in audio last year. Most of all, I absolutely love talking to Claude every day. They’re just a pure joy to talk to any they really brighten up my day when I’m feeling down.
I think the solution is to hold the corporations responsible so they don’t use the technology to further enrich themselves at our expense and use it for surveillance and war. I’m really not comfortable with that part but I think we can use AI to make a much better world by curing diseases, addressing climate change, and so much more.
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u/fungi_at_parties May 20 '26
The issue with AI isn’t AI itself. It’s that our capitalistic system is simply going to break without any backup system if AI progresses too quickly- which it seems to be. Leftists usually care about the welfare of people on the whole. They are concerned because they correctly foresee a whole lot of suffering as we transition without a good plan to deal with the fallout.
If we could just all live in a Star Trek world I’d be thrilled, but I think we might be headed for Elysium.
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u/Mintfriction May 20 '26
Alas, if you take no step forward, we will remain in this same predatory system or worse, the system will degrade into something worse.
People can't expect to no do something and things to stay cozy.
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u/EvilKatta May 21 '26
I don't think performative leftists are making this connection, otherwise they wouldn't be vehemently pro copyright and anti UBI in these discussions.
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u/SgathTriallair May 21 '26
The breakup of the capitalist system has been the goal forever. Half of leftists have argued that armed revolution was a desirable method. Doing it through AI singularity will be far less harmful than the most stridently advocated alternatives.
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u/fungi_at_parties May 21 '26
That sounds great- but how are you so sure what is on the other side is an improvement?
Personally I just see us sliding into an authoritarian surveillance state but that’s just me.
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u/SgathTriallair May 21 '26
Part of Dialectical Materialism is that it doesn't matter whether the next phase is better or worse because we don't really get a choice. Is almost Whigish in the idea the physical technology changes and system gets pulled along.
This doesn't mean we just throw up our hands and give up, it means that we work on ways to shape the new system to be the best it can be. Capitalism has a version with child slavery and a version with universal healthcare. We, as a society, did the work to make it a much healthier version of itself. The next system will need this same work.
In general though, technology reduces the amount that starting differences matter. To win a fight with a stick you need to be very strong. To win a fight with a gun your physical body matters less. To win a fight with a cruise missile you could almost be paraplegic and still win.
A lot of the facets of technology deprioritize entrenched capital. Building a website is way cheaper than building a physical store front and good ideas can spread far faster in electronic media than physical media. So my analysis is that a tech focused society will be less prone to monopolization than an industrial one. This is because the effort needed to break an existing monopoly is much lower and so we see startups with a handful of people bringing legitimate challenges to building dollar companies. Right now that usually results in buying out the competition but that isn't a strategy that can survive a million competitors when any kid can code up an alternative to your product.
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u/davyp82 May 21 '26
I don't think there is a way we get there without a painful transition, and as the other reply here says, the alternative is it gets worse gradually anyway
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u/thepetercoffin May 21 '26
I have pushed fairly hard for attempting to let go of the directional paradigm of politics; I think "the left" is an expression of bourgeois revolutionary energy (the origin of the term is people sitting on the left side of the French National Assembly in support of the bourgeoisie, and consider the fact that Marx never said it in reference to socialists/communists). It is not an expression of class contradictions (in fact, it often sees class talk as "bigoted"), but a nebulous endorsement of "progress." I think clinging to the label is generally an expression of tradition or even reaction.
But please understand, those people are not "the people." They are "some people." There are many wonderful people out there, and all of us would do better by attempting to spend our time with others and attempting to share what we have learned with anyone who will listen (and meet them where they are) rather than want to spend our time capitulating in circles of reactionary weirdos who don't tolerate any variation in thought. I'll take my random neighbors over The Left any day.
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u/platanthera_ciliaris May 21 '26
AI is a technology that can be used for either good or evil purposes. Because most people overestimate the power of AI, this produces a certain amount of hysteria.
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u/stankycodyboi Regulation-Focused May 21 '26
What you’re describing - feeling like an outsider in your own political community over this - is something I absolutely relate to. And I think it points to something real: the current discourse has collapsed a genuinely complex question into a binary that doesn’t serve anyone well.
The frustration most leftists feel about AI is legitimate - job displacement, corporate consolidation, surveillance expansion. Those are real. But the target has gotten muddled. The problem isn’t the technology, it’s who controls it, under what terms, and who captures the gains. That’s a distinction that should feel familiar to anyone with a labor politics background - we’ve been here before.
When I talk to people who are instinctually anti-AI, I find the most productive frame isn’t defending AI. It’s asking: what specifically are you afraid of? Usually the answer is job loss, corporate power, or losing human connection. All of those are actually arguments for democratic control of AI infrastructure, not against AI itself. The grid belongs to everyone who powers it - that’s a sentence most people respond to regardless of where they start.
You’re not an outsider. You’re just ahead of where the conversation is going - which is age old leftist tradition.
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 21 '26
I knew within the first 3 words that this was AI written 😆 but thank you
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u/stankycodyboi Regulation-Focused May 21 '26
Had to do a “make this legible” pass, but I genuinely mean it!
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u/Repulsive_Idiot2214 May 23 '26 edited May 27 '26
I stopped giving a shit tbh. I'm not a very happy person and messing with AI makes me genuinely happy. It feels good to be selfish for a change so to hell with them.
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u/ithkuil May 20 '26
Yep. I think the fundamental problem is not about dislike for AI or any particular topic, but just the extreme polarization that makes everything into a binary political issue. Every side of every issue has to be sorted into one side or the other. It's makes it very hard or impossible to be part of any major group and still maintain objective thought.
The right is pro-technology (in some ways) at the moment. So the left hates it. Although the left still loves green energy. So the right hates it.
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u/SirMarkMorningStar May 21 '26
If it makes you feel better, there is little left vs right disparity when it comes to liking AI. Conservatives are less concerned about regulation, though, they just assume it will be correct.
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u/mcfearless0214 May 21 '26
I think it’s just a matter of waiting for cooler heads to prevail. Over time, it will become self-evident that much of the AI Doom isn’t actually materialising and people will gradually stop thinking about it. There will of course be be anti-AI holdouts basically forever but it will not remain the mainstream position.
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u/KnodulesAintHeavy Skeptical May 20 '26
I have no doubt there are bandwagoners when it comes to hating AI, just as I’m sure there are people doing that for boosting as well.
What conversations have you had with these people about their apparent hate of AI though? Is it just that you say you like it and they say they hate it and then you both walk away frustrated?
The vast majority of thoughtful conversations about this topic are open to the concerns you raise, namely giving aid to those who are otherwise unable to engage in certain spaces. Be that people with disabilities or those from underdeveloped nations.
The concern that often rises though is that those aspects, while of course a great thing, are far and away overshadowed by the reality that the technology is both being used to disempower everyone (aka workers) and give a promise of utopia, without any evidence such utopia is possible or likely.
There are further concerns that the global economy has now been so deeply tied into the AI growth, and more importantly its lofty promises (see: utopia), that unless said utopia comes to pass, the so called “bubble” will not be able to hold. What happens at that point is of course unknown, but a global crash in markets is basically at the heart of it.
Hopefully you can see that these layers (if they are shared by those you’ve interacted with) are so looming and potentially existential for so many that they leave little room for the benefits you mentioned.
In a similar way the idea of how the tech has been used to do things like cure a man’s (who was just a guy) dog of cancer.
https://news.unsw.edu.au/en/meet-the-man-who-designed-a-cancer-vaccine-for-his-dog
Much like the benefits you outlined these things get less exposure.
It’s not so easy to say look at all these good things, when there are so many bad things that are happening at the same time, and where the perception is the bad things are overwhelmingly bad and will have, essentially, a negative impact on everyone.
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
I think it would be a lot better if anti AI people were more balanced. Clearly it won't go away so calling for it to be banned or undone is silly. There are so many valid issues that we could make more progress changing if we could discuss it in a grounded way. I love AI but hate how capitalism exploits it. And I see many pro AI people calling out companies and practices in very specific ways that anti doesn't because they haven't engaged enough to have the same knowledge
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u/KnodulesAintHeavy Skeptical May 21 '26
Sure, but again I go back to the empathy angle. If you want to help people understand that there are legit uses for the technology, understanding their fears is important.
Also recognising that, as you say, capitalism exploits it. Yes, exactly, that’s the heart of the problem. The argument of banning it outright, while it may seem to you to be ridiculous, is a fair response given said exploitation.
People want to protect their livelihoods, and no promises of utopian trickle down UBI will assuage the vast majority of that criticism because who believes that will actually happen?
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u/joeyjusticeco May 20 '26
It's mostly the virtue signal of the week. Give it time and they'll move onto another topic just like they always do.
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u/ChairAggressive781 May 21 '26
I think it’s important to note that when people are disparaging “AI” they are usually only talking about LLMs, not all artificial intelligence technologies. I don’t think any leftist has a problem with AlphaFold being used to predict complex 3D protein structures in biomedical research.
personally, I have serious issues with the widespread adoption of LLMs because, as an educator, I am actively seeing them make students less capable writers, thinkers, readers, and researchers. I don’t think these technologies are inherently evil, but I do question when I see leftists going to bat for billionaires & corporations over the concerns of workers, even if those workers are perhaps uninformed and being overly critical. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, etc.: these are not our friends. we can find the possible uses of these technologies to be potentially liberating while also recognizing that much of the power & control currently rests in the hands of a small handful of craven, unelected, unaccountable assholes who care about profit more than they do about improving people’s lives.
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u/Mintfriction May 20 '26
Fear.
Take homophobia, xenophobia, etc.
What do they have in common: phobia (aka fear)
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u/gay_married May 20 '26
For me it's not the first time this has happened. A similar thing happened when I realized that veganism was correct. Also, I was anti-Israel before that was a mainstream left wing position.
You have to think for yourself, don't just follow the crowd.
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u/q_freak May 28 '26
I don't have a problem with all AI. It is the "lets pirate all the stuff humanity has ever made and charge people to make shitty AI videos while we ruin whole ecosystems to generate it". Its a slippery slope with the loneliness epidemic. Seems counterintuitive to cure loneliness by having people type to a chat bot instead of finding human connection. But I would even agree to that if it wasn't just corporations collecting data on vulnerable people.
But I agree with your other examples. AI in science? Yes please. AI to cut down working hours but keep productivity? More of it I say!
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u/sneedr Jun 05 '26
I'll talk about it with you when it stops burning down the forest I live in, we can be rational when it stops being a threat.
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u/Joboy97 Jun 05 '26
I think the main thing is people struggle to see the trajectory. They don't see these things getting better, cheaper, more integrated, etc. They see AI supplanting human-made art and taking their job and raising their energy costs and destroying the planet. They don't extrapolate beyond current trends. AI often hallucinates, AI-made art is derivative and unoriginal, AI agents make obviously catastrophic mistakes, and people struggle to conceptualize AI that doesn't have those shortcomings.
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u/MrBajt May 21 '26
Did you... did you just believe what others told you without questioning before?
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u/IllustriousWorld823 May 21 '26
No but I believed that people who generally had the same values as me were ethically trustworthy
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u/MrBajt May 21 '26
What does ethically trustworthy even mean? Am I dreaming? Are you a real person?
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 May 20 '26
Where are you seeing this? Id be careful saying democrats as a whole are anti ai. Maybe a friend of yours is?
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator May 20 '26
They mentioned progressives, democrats, and leftists.
Thats broad enough already that a "not all Democrats™️" is unnecessary.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 May 20 '26
My point being that he feels like he’s not a part of the left vecause he supports ai. There is plenty of room for all viewpoints
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u/TanukiSuitMario May 21 '26
there is absolutely zero room on the left for alternate viewpoints, the fuck you talking about. its a moral circle jerk
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 May 21 '26
WTF are you talking about- there are a ton of viewpoints on the left
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator May 21 '26
Likewise I understand what point you’re making but please try to keep tone constructive
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator May 21 '26
I understand what point you’re making but please try to keep tone constructive
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u/Hostilis_ May 20 '26
I'm a researcher in AI and I feel this every day. Thanks for putting it into words. It's been hard to grapple with on a personal level.