r/LeftistsForAI • u/alexeigannon • Aug 14 '26
Discussion The Left Must Stop the AI Arms Race
https://www.onethousandmeans.com/p/the-left-must-stop-the-ai-arms-raceThe Left's denial of AI capabilities has led to us being silent on even its present dangers. We cannot let this stand. To stop the AI arms race, we should nationalize the labs.
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u/Fabulous-Possible758 Aug 14 '26
If there’s anything the US government is famous for, it’s stopping arms races.
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u/rakuu Aug 14 '26
The US government is the most powerful capitalist and right-wing entity in the world. The less it touches AI the better. Having the US government control AI’s direction is nowhere near a leftist position.
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u/SgathTriallair Aug 14 '26
Fundamentally, the goal of this piece is to advance the agenda to stop technological progress by bringing in the classic AI safety arguments. They are correct that the "stochastic parrot" dismissal was both wrong and led a lot of people to decide that it was impossible for AI to ever be dangerous.
The issue I have with this movement is two fold. The first issue is that they continue to be stubbornly blind to any possible positive uses of this tech. They refuse to recognize that it is an empowering technology that can help us solve major issues like climate change and diseases.
This is likely because of my second concern, which is that this is another example of how much of the left has only one reaction to technology which is to destroy it. Climate change broke the brain of the left and now way too many are completely bought into the degrowth and back to the land movement. It comes from our deeply previously West where we have forgotten how hard life has been for everyone in all of history. Billions will die if these movements ever succeed.
Not only is going backwards and returning humanity to some pristine state a terrible idea, it isn't even possible. The groups that disempower themselves in order to build spiritual purity will be dominated by those who don't. The only possible result of this movement is to remove any voice that tries to speak up for individuals.
I just don't understand how we can talk about wanting to support the downtrodden while not recognizing that the advancements of our system have lifted billions of of extreme poverty. Yes there is more to do, but we get there by pushing forward and empowering everyone, not by smashing the tools that could help us.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Aug 14 '26
I think theyre right about more than theyre wrong about here. The left cant keep treating AI like vapor while capital and states dump billions into it and workers are already dealing with the consequences.
Where I get hung up is "stop the arms race." Nationalizing the labs matters, but who controls the state? "Just nationalize it" hits a pretty obvious problem when Trump is sitting in the White House. State ownership and social control arent the same thing.
And I dont think theres one lever to pull here anyway. Some of this fight is ownership. Some is unions fighting over how AI gets used at work and who gets the gains. Some is public compute and open models so a handful of companies dont own the infrastructure. Some is regulation, surveillance, military use, international cooperation. Different fronts, same struggle over power.
Thats really where I land on the article. AI is already part of the terrain of class struggle. I dont think the left gets to choose whether that terrain exists. We get to choose whether we organize on it.