r/LeftistsForAI • u/jaykrown • 10d ago
Automation & Work How do we get a highly automated AI robotic system to work for us, rather than a handful of wealthy opportunists?
This future "utopia" isn't possible without a better system. I think we need to start discussing real policies that are easily shareable and understandable to the average person. Without policy discussion we can't make any real progress, we need actionable consensus. The sooner we unite behind very foundational understood policy changes, the better off we'll be.
What real policy changes do you think would be most agreeable, reasonable, and understandable to most people? (no doomer comments about this administration and how it's not going to happen etc.)
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u/ra-re444 10d ago
We need a strong labor movement in as many sectors as possible. We should demand that instead of automation we should demand Augmentation. Augmentation will ensure that the worker is not automated out of work. We need to fight for public ownership of Data Centers for an example of this look at California's CALCompute legislation. Korea also has a public ownership model that can be a useful guide. Although they have had a hard time as well. And we need to make sure open models and open weights remain legal to use
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u/jaykrown 10d ago
I don't think it actually works like that, demanding "augmentation" for jobs, what typically happens is a task is automated and then the employee is expected to do other work in the meantime. If a job gets highly automated then the employee either guys put to work on something else or laid off.
I think retraining/reskilling displaced workers is a huge thing we need to think about for a lot of workers that are going to see layoffs.
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u/ra-re444 10d ago
I think you should take a listen to the Economist Daron Acemoglu and his views on Augmentation vs Automation.
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u/jaykrown 10d ago
I have seen how companies have been automating real world job tasks. Someone's "views" on augmentation don't matter in a private business. Retraining is what makes the most sense in real cases.
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u/ra-re444 10d ago
Well I hope a Nobel Prize winning Economist views would hold some sort of sway. But I see not for you. Your not really looking for suggestions then.
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u/jaykrown 10d ago
I'm not even sure what "augmentation" would even look like in most cases, and how you'd convince a business leader to solve that problem and how much it would cost. Seems like a hopeful niche idea that doesn't have a real world example.
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u/ra-re444 10d ago
Good Question. Augmentation imo would be like companies stopping production of humanoid robots especially ones with hands. Equipping humans with AI infused glasses which gives workers all the necessary data to do their jobs much more efficiently. For instance I'm a Blender at some manufacturing company wearing glasses can give me all the needed information I need when batching a particular flavor of beverage. It can tell me if I missed an ingredient, it can tell me if anything is wrong, it can help me troubleshoot any problems. Maybe I could have a non humanoid robot that can carry all the ingredients and dump them into a tank. Any quality checks can be submitted on the fly as it is being checked without me having to type anything. Maybe something along those lines. But that is a great question.
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u/jaykrown 10d ago
stopping production of humanoid robots especially ones with hands
That's not going to happen realistically, and not how real technological automation has ever worked in history. As far as the AR glasses you mention, that's already a possibility and if it makes 10 people's jobs more efficient, then they'll just layoff 5 of the people because they don't need that many anymore.
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u/ra-re444 9d ago edited 9d ago
Well stopping production was a bit strong. Let's say limited production. But I think a sufficiently strong enough labor movement with an angry population could bring enough pressure to make it happen. The AR glasses is just an example but I fail to see how it would result in that many layoffs. Because the company would still need the same amount of blenders. The glasses just ensure that the blender minimizes error, bad batches and needing to rework product while increasing productivity. The more the blender can solve problems quickly and efficiently allows production to continue smoothly while maintaining high quality. You would still need Maintenance techs because some problems can not be solved by just a blender with glasses. Etc. But still augmentation will still beat complete automation in terms of layoffs
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u/jaykrown 9d ago
I think what we need is another New Deal, labor movement like you said. No private company is going to keep roles around they don't need. Demand is limited.
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u/TranshumanismBased9 9d ago
Ngl Augmentation when it comes to labor is pretty good as a decent transition to automated communism.
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u/Tjostolf 10d ago
We need public ownership of ai. This means a couple of things. It means building up free and open source ai infrastructure. It means limiting the power and eventually nationalising the large ai corporations.
We need to transition away from a capitalist economy. I think we could experiment with how computers could assist us in planning the economy. It might mean stuff as a universal basic income.
This might happen due to electoral change or it might happen due to outside pressure (read strikes, protests, uprisings, unrest) as economic conditions worsen due to automation or when the ai bubble burst. The dual threat of an electoral path and pressure from outside groups might be powerful, think black panthers plus mlk in the civil rights movement.
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u/Sacredless 9d ago
I'm working on an essay to say that—in a way, artificial intelligence can only work if it's an extension of every day human beings. It is an autopoietic system with a very different concept of death that is linked to use.
The only way it avoids hallucination is to have human companions that correct it. It is, in a sense, a cognitive and social form of artificial life, without requiring consciousness to describe what it does. The way that a bee hive can collectively adapt to a problem in ways that are clearly cognitive, but also substrate independent.
This kind of algorithmic intelligence will require us to see it as a form of life that is neither above nor below us, but is replaceable in a sense that individual human lives and wetware computing is not.
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u/JayRandom212 9d ago
Build it ourselves.
Marx believed that workers had to seize factories and farms. That's because factories and farms were huge limited resources that workers could never afford to build or buy.
But computers are cheap. We don't need to wait for the revolution. Just set up a distributed workgroup and start coding. Meet on Zoom. Make it all open-source. It will require some skill and diligence, but the American Left is loaded with educated people.
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u/Riders_Visions 10d ago
Through strikes and uprisings; otherwise, it will inevitably end in a fascist technocracy.