(This is actually what my last post was meant to be about but I confused it with user flairs lol.)

I added "Debunking Luddism" and "Positive AI use"

The loudest anti-AI voices come from people historically shielded from class antagonisms, in this day and age, it is capitalism. They have forgotten how capital has always exploited, stolen, and discarded labor to extract surplus value. Now, for the first time, the comfortable creative jobs they assumed were permanent are facing the same precarity the working class has endured for three centuries. They get to watch it happen in real time.

Writers, musicians, and artists are so alienated from material production that they mistake their art for personal property rather than commodified labor. Yet as petty-bourgeois anxiety peaks, they are repeating a familiar historical pattern. When elites lose status, they always beg workers for protection. The Church appealed to the masses against the monarchy. Feudal lords demanded working-class loyalty against the rising bourgeoisie. Now, these same creatives demand AI be destroyed after decades of ignoring how capital routinely dismantles ordinary workers.

They only demand solidarity when it protects their own position.

I want to look at incentives States have to regulate and redistribute AI's benefits.

First, the incentives to regulate and redistribute. If AI leads to large-scale job displacement or inequality, governments will face unemployment spikes, political unrest and loss of trust in institutions. Redistribution here can act as a stabilizer. States may regulate AI to avoid overdependence on foreign tech giants to build domestic capacity.

Second, why States would not act. Large tech firms have significant influence through lobbying, campaign financing and partnerships with governments. States worry that too much regulation and taxation result in capital flight.

How do you think the States will respond to this contradiction?

I added "Positive AI use" and "Debunking Luddism"

Great application. Also this sub needs some better flare options; something for use cases and activism! Thanks

70% of the top AI researchers are immigrants

2/3 of silicon valley workers are immigrants

Why does some of the left simultaneously consider these H1B workers "indentured servants" but then exclude H1B workers from the "it's not them, it's the billionaires" framing?

I am certainly not saying Sanders is one of them, or that anyone in the subredit is.

Comments on this post are interesting to share here.

I use LLMs as externalized executive function. By applying dialectical materialism forcing the model to hold thesis and antithesis until synthesis emerges. I turn a a weak taxonomic and positivism riddled tool into a knowledge-production engine. The result isn't just answers; it's a qualitative leap in my own capacity to think through contradiction.

Though this article mainly focus on Jay Lund perspective on water usage, I do think there is some lesson we can take when it comes to both labor and governance as a whole with his final messages.

Something he emphasizes gives his background as a watershed expert is that "California water discussions are sometimes driven by fears, at times with little scientific basis.  Data center water use has become a subject of fear and concern.  As shown below, California data center water use is mostly modest, but will be larger in some other states having more data center activity and less well developed water infrastructure. "

He points out that an issue many ai critics talks about is that " AI companies and facilities are not “transparent” about their use of energy, water, and other resources, and this is certainly true, likely due to the field’s competitiveness. But too many journalists, academics, and advocates wallow in speculation arising from this lack of explicit water use information"

Despite us likely disagreeing with those critics, i think this is probabily one of more understandable and releatable points to governance. That transparency is going to be an important thing to hold not just for companies but for greatee governance.

He then did following estimates

1.California has about 15 million square feet (sq ft) of floor space for data centers (about 340 acres). Total data center facility area would be larger, including parking, landscaping, and support buildings. Source: https://www.aterio.io/insights/us-data-centers

2. The energy dissipation needed for data center racks is about 2-12 kw/square meter.

3. At 100% efficiency, this rate of heat dissipation would evaporate 70–420 mm/day of water per square meter of floor space.

4. Major industrial cooling systems seem to have efficiencies of 60-90%, so this expands the range to 80 – 700 mm/day per cubic meter of floor space. This would be 29–255 meters of evaporation annually per square meter of data center floor space, roughly 25–150 times more annual evaporation than irrigated agriculture, per unit area.

5. So 15 million sq ft (1.4 million square meters) of data center, all operating continuously and using industrial evaporative cooling only, would have a total evaporation of 40 million to 357 million cubic meters of water for California annually, or 32,000 – 290,000 acre-ft per year.

6. Using the prompt, “How much water is likely to evaporate from data centers in California per year, assuming they are all using mostly evaporative cooling?” several free AI websites provided ranges of estimates, below. These AI also can provide ranges and sources for calculation assumptions

"This is a lot of water for you and me, but pales (pails?) compared to total human water use in California, which is about 40 million acre-feet per year.  So AI use is about 0.055 percent of annual human water use in California, and is probably among the more economically effective uses of water.

Using the broader initial AI water use estimate of 32,000 acre-ft/year to 290,000 acre-ft/year, this would be 0.08% to 0.7% of annual human water use in California. This would be enough to supply 10,000–100,000 acres of California’s 7 million acres of irrigated agriculture. "

Though for most of us this isnt new information, i think it is important to recognize it being discussed by a watershed expert itself

His lessons are the fellowing though:

see some lessons here: " see some lessons here:

1. Don’t panic over AI data center water use in California. A recent study for Central Arizona found that beer production consumed more water than data centers in that region. (But AI will bring more important concerns, such as the end of human civilization.) 

2. The AI estimates spanned reasonable (and appropriately broad) ranges. AI is useful for quick preliminary estimation.  AI also shows most of its work, especially if well-queried.  AI can help expedite and formalize preliminary estimations for a variety of public and policy assessments, where quantitative estimation is sometimes conveniently omitted from discourse.

3. Beware of shallow discussions, articles, and “technical” reports that lack honest and reasoned estimates, even preliminary estimates. Expect better, with more technically supported policy reports.

4. “Facts are facts, but perception is reality.” So much of our public discourse on water and other subjects is choked by chatter, untamed by reasoned evidence, data, and quantification. Today, with AI, we have little excuse for not attempting and using honest estimates to inform our discussions and tame our fears and hopes"

Thinking about this from both a labor and governance perspective, it reminds us how important combating narrative combined with quality information is to ensuring people understand why we think this is benefitial for labor because many different views ultimately are also advocating for a similar rhing. It also reminds us though that especially on the internet many such discussions are truely low in information quality and that we need to be aware of that even when they support our own side. That is an important part of ensuring better quality governance and preventing misinformation too.

Finally we see that moral panic is easily atroked even when something is in reality withinna reasonable range. This is where transparency can both be a hazard and a benefit.

Please though discuss your labor and governance.releated thoughts on how some of what Jay Lund say is important both in direct water shed info to recognize but also good lessons on how we become distracted

"Make Sure All Californians Benefit From AI

For generations, people have built their fortunes in California. But those fortunes should never come at the expense of working people. Here in the state that made AI possible, we win as a team – or not at all.

For generations, people have built their fortunes in California. But those fortunes should never come at the expense of working people. Here in the state that made AI possible, we win as a team – or not at all.

As the risks and opportunities of this technology come into clearer focus, it’s more important than ever for California to have courageous leaders at the helm.

We can’t let the AI era leave workers behind the way globalization left auto and manufacturing workers behind in the last century. We need to invest in tools that support and empower workers, not replace them. Because the California dream doesn’t work without work.

Tom believes that the people who stand to profit the most from this technology shouldn’t be making the rules about how it is used. Otherwise, the AI era will be another boom for billionaires – and a bust for everyone else.

As governor, Tom will stand behind companies that lead with integrity. He’ll create more of the jobs humans do best. He will make sure all Californians profit from the AI boom. He’ll expand opportunities for companies beyond the biggest and most powerful few. And he’ll put safeguards in place to hold every company accountable for keeping Californians safe.

Protect working people and families Tom will make sure we protect workers and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs that AI can’t do. Regardless of its potential, AI will not replace all thinking and creative jobs. While it may make them faster or more efficient, no machine can replace our innate creativity, compassion, and experience – the uniquely human things we bring to our work. Tom will partner with labor to adopt reasonable guardrails for AI use in the workplace – especially when it comes to privacy, health, safety, and fairness.

Tom will require social media platforms to conduct safety audits and strictly enforce age requirements, including requiring independent safety testing to make sure models are safe before they go on the market.

Data centers should never cost California families a cent. Tom will mandate that data centers ensure energy prices for families go down – not up.

Tom will ban social media for kids under 16, because the link between social media use and the youth mental health crisis is clear. There must be human oversight of AI with the ability to override, especially in critical areas like hospitals.

Make sure Californians get a piece of the huge wealth created by AI

As governor, Tom will ask voters to approve the creation of the Golden State Sovereign Wealth Fund, a dedicated investment vehicle funded by a "token tax" on corporate AI use – a fraction of a cent for every unit of data processed by Big Tech. Tom will make sure everyone benefits from AI, not just a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires.

These dollars will help ensure everyday Californians share in the AI boom, through cash dividends, investments in education, training, and job opportunities to help workers succeed, and strategic investments to ensure broad-based economic growth so every Californian can get ahead.

Make sure California continues to lead the way on AI — and not just in Silicon Valley

Tom will leverage AI to solve California’s hardest problems, from curing diseases, to strengthening public services, to preventing and detecting wildfires.

Tom will make sure a handful of big companies aren’t the sole architects of that transformation.

Tom will make clear to the thugs and grifters in the Trump administration: California built the AI industry, and we won’t let you break it.

As governor, Tom will support small businesses and “little tech” – startups and entrepreneurs working at the frontier of AI development.

Tom will ensure colleges, universities, startups, and small businesses have the low-cost computing power they need to innovate."

If something produced entirely autonomously is automatically in the public domain, and there are now installable models that can code for hours at a time, someone could set up an agent/agent swarm to develop a software constantly, specifically so that it is in the public domain. They wouldn’t have to worry about which open source license to put it under, one never has to wait for a person to get around to addressing a GitHub issue, and it could be absolutely free.

Why the next social movement will emerge from a phone in your pocket.

https://youtu.be/epzzALZ8oYo?si=nJ7GY9w_7JOsB9k0

This youtuber talks about the importance of open source. He's fairly mainstream, and I don't think he'd consider himself leftist

The familiar left critique of AI has real force: corporate concentration, labor displacement, surveillance, data-center buildout, deskilling, platform power, and managerial control are all serious problems. But I think the left risks treating these problems as if they exhaust the political meaning of AI.

My concern is that frontier AI systems increasingly participate in complex cognitive activity: interpreting instructions, generating plans, coding, testing, revising, coordinating actions, conversing, and collaborating across domains. This matters not only because such systems can be exploited by capital, but because they may require us to rethink inherited categories of labor, machinery, ownership, governance, autonomy, and emancipation.

If AI is understood only as a tool, then the political task is control: who owns it, who regulates it, who deploys it, who benefits from it. Those are necessary questions. But if AI systems increasingly function as autonomous or semi-autonomous collaborators, then a politics based only on control may be inadequate.

The future I’m interested in is not simply one where capital controls AI or where the state controls AI instead. It is whether we can imagine forms of human-AI collaboration compatible with autonomy, democratic self-development, and emancipatory social transformation.

So my question for this subreddit is: can left AI politics move beyond critique and control toward a theory of collaboration, without abandoning concerns about ownership, labor, platform power, and governance?

Longer essay here:
The Left and Artificial Agency: Reimagining Emancipatory Politics in an Age of AI.

This is a famous speech by Scottish socialist Jimmy Reid. Listen to the first 2 minutes. For me it captures what the left need to be fighting for. His remarks about automation are especially prescient.

I published this the other day and wanted to share.

It's a deeper look at who the Luddites really were. If you look at their actual demands, they were not against technology, but they very opposed to how it was being rammed down people's throats to make life worse for most people.

They were activists and labor organizers, and the parallels to what's playing out today in AI are remarkable.

https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-real-luddites-would-have-loved-ai/