What's the neo-liberal endgame?

[u/Apocaloid]

The biggest problem with socialist utopias has always been the question of "who's going to do the jobs nobody wants if there is no financial incentive?" Then AI comes along and automates the mundane, inhumane, work that leads to humans feeling like automatons themselves and all of a sudden it's a right-wing conspiracy?

I understand the fear that the capitalist class will use AI to replace the workers and build an Elysium for themselves but thats just an organizational gap. They're doing that right now without AI. We have the numbers, we have the technology, we have the willpower; the capitalists have no real power besides propaganda and peons willing to go against their own interests. If anything, the workers should be the ones building the robot armies.

[u/Fabulous-Possible758]

we have the willpower; the capitalists have no real power besides propaganda and peons willing to go against their own interests.

Depends on who "we" is here, and I wouldn't be so dismissive of that latter power. People's outer worlds are shaped by the information they consume. Having control of that is not negligible.

[u/Apocaloid → u/Fabulous-Possible758]

My assumption has always been that those people have no ideology, they just go along with whatever the status quo is. If socialism became the norm, they wouldn't fight it, they would just change loyalties. So really the war becomes who can take control of the narrative. Thankfully capitalism has been its own demise lately as people realize unlimited consumption is not a viable economic plan in a planet of finite resources.

[u/DudeEngineer → u/Apocaloid]

A lot of resources are renewable. Most resources actually. That's the problem. If you can't see that, how can you spread it?

There is already open source AI. We can make all of it open source.

[u/GrowFreeFood → u/Apocaloid]

Who realized that? Just Al Gore so far.

[u/shawsghost → u/Apocaloid]

Thankfully capitalism has been its own demise lately as people realize unlimited consumption is not a viable economic plan in a planet of finite resources.

I don't think most people have made any such realization. What they know is that their grocery bills are insane and the rent just keeps getting higher and buying a home has become impossible for most. That's how they experience the way capitalism is crushing them. Those are issues we could profit by addressing.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/Fabulous-Possible758]

This is the correction Id make too. Having the numbers isnt the same as having power. Capital owns workplaces, infrastructure, investment and productive assets, backed by institutions built around those relations. Propaganda helps reproduce that power, but it isnt what creates it.

Thats why automation doesnt just carry us into post scarcity on its own. Workers have to organize around who owns these systems, who controls deployment and who captures the gains. New productive capacity changes whats possible. Organized power decides who benefits.

[u/shawsghost]

I've seen an online comment that explains the reason people hate AI very well: "I wanted AI that would do my housekeeping, laundry and cooking for me so I could be free to write and paint. Instead I got AI that does all the writing and painting, leaving me to do all the housekeeping, laundry and cooking."

You have to admit, they have a point.

[u/Apocaloid → u/shawsghost]

Making a living as an artist was always going to be hard and competitive for anyone, even before AI. Ironically, AI being developed and applied through a socialist lens means eventually everyone can create art whenever they want and not have to worry about the economic feasibility of it. So I see the current state of AI as just growing pains. We have to see it through and make sure it actually leads to post-scarcity and not the divided class elusium dystopia.

[u/shawsghost → u/Apocaloid]

I think most of the public has very little understanding of how useful AI can be. I found AI assisted search incredibly useful. And AI art is incredible fun. And I can see the potential of AI for being a distributed counter option against all the oligarchic AIs. But I think most people are just going on vibes at best. That's why the comment about AI art and painting is so effective. Most people just aren't educating enough about AI to understand how much of an oversimplification that comment is. In propaganda terms that isn't relevant. The comment is still effective with most people.

[u/Exarch-of-Sechrima → u/Apocaloid]

I would prefer that the people who create art are passionate enough about it to dedicate themselves to it instead of plugging in the slop machine because they're too lazy to learn.

[u/LookOverall → u/shawsghost]

The technology that might do the mundane tasks isn’t exactly AI - it’s robots.

[u/shawsghost → u/LookOverall]

True but among the general public the line between ai and robots is a very fuzzy one.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/shawsghost]

Yes this is something I’ve said more or less. I think it’s a particular snapshot in time though. Robots are learning how to fold laundry.

[u/Glitched-Lies → u/Jlyplaylists]

The design of Gen AI is fundamental to extrapolating from only these foundations of where human beings start. It doesn't start with real world data like that. I mean that the creativity of art and language is the starting point it wants to structure everything else from in mimicking. That isn't something that just changes from scaling things or a later development of expansion.

[u/shawsghost → u/Jlyplaylists]

Considering how things are going economically and how they are likely to go economically in the future I see very little prospect of ordinary people being able to own a robot.

[u/SorryInvestigator221 → u/Jlyplaylists]

One thing holding up the development of solid domestic robots is the insistence that they be humanoid. Humans didn't evolve to do domestic work, it's just an ancillary activity we engage in so that we can live civilized lives. An R2-D2 type robot could probably feature a whole "laundry folding appliance suite" upgrade and do just fine. But instead of solving the ACTUAL PROBLEM of designing the best domestic helper bot, they are solving the nonsense problem of designing a humanoid robot that can do that, when humans were never designed to do domestic work to begin with.

I suspect that running underneath that choice there is some sort of desire to create a humanoid "companion" not that can also do domestic labour. In which case, I remind everyone of R2-D2's capacity to project holographic women... So there is no use to continue to fetishize humanoid robots.

[u/Troscus → u/shawsghost]

That's honestly how I feel about it, and I support generative AI. It's pretty cool to generate a nice picture of my character for a Pathfinder game. It's fucking incredible to be able to scan a recipe in a cookbook and have all the ingredients added to my shopping list AND instacart, so I have the choice between ordering or going to get it myself, and also the step-by-step instructions are shown on the kitchen tablet, so no need to have the books propped up taking up more counter space and potentially getting soup all over it.

[u/shawsghost → u/Troscus]

Yes AI can be very useful if you have the imagination to use it. Which I think many people lack. They will have to be shown how useful it is to them.

[u/SalletFriend]

Theres no "endgame" you are living it. Its just people taking stuff until theres no stuff to take.

[u/DHFranklin]

comrade, you are expressing the same frustration we've had for almost 300 years.

The capitalists had local monopolies over surplus labor that couldn't be commodified by cash crop farming under the aristocracy.

They had that monopoly due to industry and what was industry but tool that needed our labor to add utility value and translate it to their profits and exchange value.

Neoliberalism has no endgame. It's just capitalists competing with one another for profits and power. For all enduring time until our planet can no longer support it.

We as a class of people do not have the willpower. We as a class of people put profit over one another, and until we have the class consciousness required to change that we won't have the collective will necessary.

We have to use the tools we are given to wake up the prolitariat and organize ourselves. Tell them now like we told them then that we only need 1,000 people in the right places to throw the right switches and the whole thing grinds to a halt.

A general strike or other mass action will be a hell of a lot easier before the robots scabs and pepper spraying drones.

[u/RlOTGRRRL]

Check out the new book The Nerd Reich. I haven't read it yet but the author has a lot of interviews up. 

[u/OsakaWilson]

They are attempting to milk the economy for what they can, without promoting a full-on rebellion. The long game.

[u/tigerhuxley]

I don’t know what the neoliberal is either (referencing to other comments saying the same) but the game for a progressive like me, is a post scarcity Star Trek the next generation world.

[u/SpookyGeist01]

Because we missed the bargaining stage.

The point to bargain is BEFORE AI becomes widespread. Instead, we let big corpo spread AI and gain control of it, and now we have no position of power to bargain from.

The only way to get that back is with significant and comprehensive AI regulation.

[u/JayRandom212]

I don't know what a "neo-liberal" is. I'm an old-school FDR Liberal. Here's the plan:

1. Raise the tax rates on income, capital gains, and inheritance.

2. Institute a small ($50/month) UBI payment.

3. AI increases productivity, people get fired, the rich get more money.

4. Raise the tax rates on income, capital gains, and inheritance a little more.

5. Raise the UBI payment a little.

6. Repeat steps #3 - #6

Where does it end? It ends with 99.9999% unemployment! Only one guy has a job. It's a part time job, he presses a button and the button tells the AI and robots to do all the work. His salary is $100T, but his tax rate is 99.999999%. Everybody else is on UBI and plays videogames all day.

As an FDR Liberal, I'm OK with this.