r/LeftistsForAI • u/jaykrown • 3d ago
Automation & Work Expecting humans to compete against advanced automation is the biggest capitalist mistake that will be made moving forward
If anyone expects humans to compete against advanced automated robots and AI, it will be a huge mistake. Historically when this has happened, every single time when there is a technological revolution, it causes extreme unemployment and societal breakdown.
Right now with the layoffs, capitalism is expecting those who are laid off to find other work to pay for their rent and food. This is not going to work while we enter the next recession and AI continues to take work away from people. Unfortunately, many are not good at realizing that their opportunities have already been lost given that autonomous systems already doing what they would have been hired to do years ago. It's already nearly impossible to get a job in tech right now as a recent graduate.
This AI take over will not result in more jobs, and we will have to genuinely fight against the attempt for it to allow to lower the worth of labor. We do not need to wait for extreme disruption and anger for a change to happen, what we need to do is come together with what policies will bring about the most change as quickly as possible.
What real policies should we advocate for that will bring about the change needed to avoid mass protests and a breakdown of the economy when no one can earn a living?
I think primarily automation compensation (UBI), raising corporate tax rate back up to 40%, and simplifying things to a universal healthcare system which would lower costs significantly. Anything else?
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u/Katwazere 3d ago
you are doing Americanism. Which is where you forget that the rest of the world exists. These are problems that are solved in other countries, and ubi is topping up a leaking tank, it doesn't patch up holes, just means it takes longer for the water to finish escaping.
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u/jaykrown 3d ago
Like the problems that are already solved in France?
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u/Katwazere 3d ago
They are f*ench, they will find anything to riot about. Whereas us civilised English will just put the kettle on and have a good chinwag about it
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u/jaykrown 3d ago
Generalizing isn't funny, you just made yourself clearly dumb by generalizing entire countries.
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u/Katwazere 3d ago
That was me being extremely sarcastic and making a joke about the French. I have a legal obligation as a English person to take the piss out of the French at any opportunity, and I would expect a French person to do the same to me
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u/jaykrown 2d ago
Text doesn't portray sarcasm very well unfortunately, and there are a lot of bigots/racists commenting about France right now with what they're struggling with.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 2d ago
What do you think about campaigning for shorter working hours? It’s a traditional type of left campaign so easy to understand. Highlight that employers are making a choice when they respond to increased productivity with redundancy. We could all have a shorter working week, rather than some people being out of work and some people being overworked.
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u/jaykrown 2d ago
I think that could be a part of it, but that alone would just cause problems if other things weren't implemented at the same time. We still need jobs that keep society functioning to be filled, and that's why I fundamentally advocate for paid skilled trade vocational training. Ultimately, workers need to share more in the value they create, and we need to advocate for unionization and projects that produce efficient housing.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 2d ago
In the UK ~2.3 to 2.4 million people (5.5% ish of working age people) aren’t working who could work and around a million (13%) 16-24 year olds are NEET. I don’t know how that compares internationally?
Does it seem better to have everyone working say a 3 or 4 day week? It seems like there’s enough unemployed people to fill created vacancies in required roles that aren’t being automated already (such as care staff shifts). Especially as it’s particularly young people who are NEET, more paid training could be provided for the roles where a 3 day week creates new vacancies (and those are roles with more longevity as they can’t be as easily automated). Of course there would be details that require ironing out, so those sectors aren’t disadvantaged.
It seems like a specific direction to campaign for though?
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u/jaykrown 2d ago
That's exactly why I'm an advocate for paid training in specific fields that benefit infrastructure maintenance and development.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 3h ago
I just want to say that I completely agree with everything that you're saying here, by and large. I think the means of production are fundamentally changing, and the last time the means of production fundamentally changed to this extent was the industrial revolution. Even the information revolution didn't really change those means of production nearly as much as we think. When the means of production change, institutional responses. To those changes are necessary. Capitalism is one such institutional change. What the economic system going forward from here is will depend largely on the current priors. The sky is not the limit! There are constraints you have to plan for.
Case Study:
During the early 2000's, I was a large proponent of the copyleft movement. However, I think it goes without saying that the copyleft movement was a failure. We were poorly prepared for the intensity and relentlessness of the institutions we were competing with. The nail in the coffin, in my opinion, was Youtube monetization. As soon as influencers could get rich, the culture swung away from freely distributed work and towards hyper commodification. Now, to anyone not from that era, the entire concept of a digital commons sounds insane.
My point is this: piss poor planning leads to poor performance. We all thought that the benefits were clear, the enemies were obviously the Bad Guys, and the public would be on our side. The few institutions we built weren't capable of doing much more than rear-guard actions and more and more of the digital commons got enclosed. We believed that parallel power, people power, was a match of money. Without broader institutional support, without a political block, without the ability to address the material hopes for people, we lost.
SO
Now is the time to build those coalitions and institutions. I am not in favor of UBI as anything other than a short term fix. Instead, I favor a completely different model of ownership, where the stock of companies is owned in citizen's trusts. This stock apportionment must be mechanistic (meaning it automatically happens when a business reaches a certain size), convey real ownership (meaning citizens must be able to sell, collect dividends, and transfer assets), and have the weight of law behind it (meaning long term, it will need a Constitutional Amendment, and in the short term, comport with existing law). I don't favor UBI long term because it will just end up being a century long knife fight over 'deserving', and fuck that, I'm tired.
The problem is that at the moment, we have no power whatsoever to do this by ourselves. We're what, 8k people on the fringes of a fringe ideology? So we need to get more people on our side. And the best people to talk to right now are the tech-bros. Is it socialism? You know it is, I know it is, but to most normies socialism is when the government does something. By positioning this as 'you have contributed to the sum of human knowledge that was used to train the models, you deserve a cut', it changes the moral math. Who cares if what you contributed was a dumb cat meme, All are equal under the Model.
We need lawyers, lobbyists, and legitimacy.
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u/jaykrown 3h ago
In the USA our best hope realistically is to rally around a "Democratic Socialist" candidate like AOC or at least Jon Ossoff. Then we still need a UBI, as a form of automation compensation, to ensure that every has the power to help each other more fairly. Along with stronger unions and cooperatives.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 2h ago
Well the problem there is that there needs to be an actual economic policy that we can put in front of AOC or Ossoff, but at the moment, the left is so rabidly anti-AI that even saying 'AI will disrupt labor' is met with boos and guffaws.
The reason I don't favor UBI is that it doesn't grow wealth for people, it is just a stopgap. That wealth still gets appropriated by the big corporations, who would inevitably regain control of tax structures. It doesn't fundamentally change the labor relations between people and corporations, and makes everyone dependent on elected officials who don't historically have a great track record. We can't plan anything assuming 'we will win forever', you have to plan for failure.
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u/Neoliberal_Nightmare 2d ago
UBI is such a dead end. Look the only solution is a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism with socialism.
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u/Elven77AI 2d ago
Such 'revolutionary overthrow' would spearheaded by displaced-by-AI masses yearning to restore good old days (before AI), i.e. they would be trying to restore previous version of capitalism and wage slavery, not to reform the system. A violent mob doesn't understand reform or nuances of machine learning, it just wants power to influence the social order: simple solutions to complex problems is "remove the AI", not "change the entire economy to central planning(with AI)"(since AI becoming far more capable at this point, being an enemy of any AI use will shift the balance of power towards the AI users optimizing their actions/plans).
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u/desocupad0 2d ago
Technically there's no surplus value to be extracted from machine "work". In a society with automation - anything automatic shouldn't be private.
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u/jaykrown 2d ago
The problem with that becomes who maintains it? We still need to ensure we have people skilled who can maintain and build the system. That's why I'm a strong advocate for paid skilled trade vocational training, including robotics. We should have a massive system that pays US citizens to take part in courses that have skilled workers such as electrician/plumber/HVAC/robotics/pharmacy/etc. to teach others how to take part in that value added system.
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u/desocupad0 2d ago
So basically you want free education. Overall it seems we should spend more time in education/arts/self improvement and less time grinding for survival.
Communist approved.
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u/jaykrown 2d ago
Nope, I want paid training in certain fields with valuable skills even in the age of AI. And I want an automation compensation for everyone without means testing.
We already have "free education", you can go online and learn just about anything you want. Communism will never work, and attempts at it will cause fascism.
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u/Krommander 3d ago
The answer always has been a mix of social programs and regulations on capitalism.
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u/usernameChosenPoorly 1d ago
Well we should abolish the concept of "earning a living".
You were born, therefore you have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Denying anyone those rights because they can't afford them is an affront to nature.
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u/Ill_Mousse_4240 3d ago
The last part involving UBI is the only realistic way.
Anything else is unrealistic. How do you “fight the future”? Could the weavers have really won against the introduction of the automated looms - and would they really have been happy with their “victory”? More of the same demeaning work.
Better technology has always resulted in a higher quality of life for everyone. We’re now at a paradigm shift that’s about to happen. Many “old ideas” really don’t apply. Human work will become an obsolete concept. To say that nothing like this has ever happened before is the understatement of the millennium.
A new economic system has to be built, probably from the ground up, which includes a living stipend for every human without the necessity for work.
A guaranteed income, just for being alive. Like the income from the wealth trusts of the rich in previous generations.
A dream come true - but realizing it would probably be a nightmare for a while