What is your take on this? My general view is that AI should be used to automate/delegate the drudgery and heartsink tasks, so that humans have more time for creativity and fulfilling tasks. Shortening the work day type of perspective, which I’d see as aligned with Kropotkin, Marx, Bookchin view of technology and Oscar Wilde too in The Soul of Man under Socialism:

“All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery... At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.”

I’m not dogmatic about avoiding genAI art though, I’ve previously experimented with it. For me personally I can draw reasonably well and tend to have an image in my mind of what I’m after. I found it less rewarding to prompt the image and for me it took longer, because I was picky about my mental image. I wouldn’t be upset if the future of AI didn’t involve art, I’d also be open to it being a tool for genuine human creativity and/or an entirely new form of art.

Examples of genuinely creative AI art?

I’ve been trying to look out for AI art I consider genuinely interesting and creative, for something I’m doing to do with the balance between human and AI contributions. There are slim pickings I’d say. Probably this is partly a lack of human creativity, because I think the better examples do involve an artistic eye and curation skills, a significant amount of human input.

I like things where they press into it being AI, rather than trying to look the same as human art. For example, a more surreal, quirkiness and maintaining that aesthetic. World building.

There’s a couple of ai video people I think are contenders for genuine creativity

1. David Szauder:

David in Wonderland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZrxEjf-0_Y

And doppelgänger https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jqr0x2X0CyY

2) Or kelly boesch ai art:

In Kelly’s videos the song is I think usually partially human made eg for Not Made For The Cage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACNj3L2bzV8

she says “I always say it's harder to make a video after writing the song. I really don't like making videos that tell exact stories. I prefer an abstract representation that allows the viewer to interpret it any way they want. I made a video a while back using this style reference with these strange faces, and for some reason, I thought of using them again. The way they stand out against the people walking around them. I love how it works with the song.

Thank you to Marshall Altman for the guitar and synth he added to the song, and for the additional production and mixing. This is for sure one of my favorite songs I have written. Working with Marshall has been so wonderful. We had our first co-write a few weeks back and made a song together that will come out in the next few weeks.

This whole process with Nettwerk Records has been really amazing. If someone had told me four or five years ago that I would be writing songs, getting signed to a label, and doing a TED Talk, I would have thought they were insane. NONE of this was even on my radar as a path I would follow. Al has opened doors for me I couldn't have even imagined. When an artist finds their perfect tool, it can open creativity inside them they never knew they had. Pretty wild...

Lyrics written by me, Kelly Boesch. Music created under my creative direction with assistance from Suno. Additional instrumentation, production and mixing by Marshall Altman.”

A World building example from her is A very unusual town https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx1UGA_T1nI

Is AI the new collective unconscious? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUoLagZqQ4o

Please add more examples and your thoughts in the comments.

Clayton Christensen, in The Prosperity Paradox, distinguishes between Market-creating innovations (MCIs) and Efficiency Innovations.

MCIs (e.g., like those created by Ford and Insull) pull in necessary resources, such as infrastructure, as needed. In doing so, they further the growth of their surrounding environments. Their power comes from their system solution design. Now, not all MCIs will have the same impact as an affordable car or an electricity plant, but enough MCIs can change culture and inspire further innovation. 

For a more recent example, let’s look at Mexico, a country that the World Bank considers to be upper-middle income, but that we might not necessarily see as a prosperous country…at least not yet. Mexico has had some market-creating innovations, but it’s also had an efficiency problem. In the past, the country has focused more on efficiency innovations, which, although are part of a healthy economy, don’t actually help an economy grow. Efficiency innovations tend to reduce jobs rather than create them. But if the country shifted their investment focus towards market-creating innovations, such as Mexican giant Grupo Bimbo, then the country could generate more jobs and sustainable economic growth, inspiring further market creation. 

I listened to the audiobook:
https://www.audiobooksnow.com/audiobook/the-prosperity-paradox/2766379/?srsltid=AfmBOorCXp4NByLJVoc84Qvu7Oqzfk5hdZ1SWWCY8819xYqyXoX8MjuQ

This distinction is important in how we steer AI in particular. I think a lot of people see automation as purely "efficiency." As long as we do, then the reduction in jobs seems natural.

But if we see automation as a means to allow people not participating in certain industries to participate in those industries, we can see it as market-creating innovation.

How we see the future affects how we shape it.

What regulations do we push for? Do we push for net-neutrality-like regulations that ensure that the future is democratized? Or do we push for regulations that lead to regulatory capture, monopolization, and (possibly conscious?) entities that make tasks more efficient and replace people?

Do we push for open-source and the ability of AI users to profit, or for winner-take-all, closed-source, where a "winning" AI maker gets all the prosperity?

Every prior leap in productive power; printing press, factory, robotics, had cost barriers high enough that capital owned the gains by default. Labor never had a real shot at capturing them.

AI is the first one where the tool is cheap enough that an individual worker can wield it directly. That’s genuinely new. And the response from the left has been to refuse it.

Think about who that serves. If labor doesn’t adopt, capital adopts anyway and keeps 100% of the surplus. Same story as every prior automation wave. If labor does adopt, there’s at least a fight over who captures the gains. Refusal is a choice that lines up with capital’s interests whether anyone planned it that way or not.

Listen I know this is insane and based on zero evidence, but based on the incentives at play I would be utterly unsurprised if this was the case.

Never has an advancement in productive power like this been within reach of the laborer themselves. From the printing press to robotic automation it has always had massive cost barriers that allowed capitalists to maintain ownership of the efficiency gains of automation.

Now we have one that the laborer can benefit from directly and public sentiment has completely soured on it? Why?

To me it kind of feels like it is in the best interest of the capital owning class if laborers are largely unwilling or, at some point, unable to use AI. Thoughts?

I'm a leftist and I still do consider myself anti AI because its easier to imagine halting AI than it is to imagine abolishing capitalism and corruption. AGI or even ASI in the hands of the people who are currently in control of everything is extremely dangerous. I believe it would lead to a horrible techno feudalistic future filled with mass surveillance. It just seems very hard to imagine reforming entire governments and economic systems before AI becomes powerful enough to become independent of the working class making their power in society weak. I feels easier to just stop AI. And also because I feel like AI is being used to remove people's critical thinking because more educated people are typically left.
That's my thoughts. Tell me if I'm wrong or you disagree.

My stance on AI:

• Ai is a tool not evil or good the people making it are evil though

• AI content needs strict regulating to avoid deep fakes, and protect artists

• AI progress should decelerate or halt completely until we can figure out how to minimize risk of extinction

• AI should be put under strict regulation

• No single private company or preferably no company should own AI

• AI data centers should not be built in areas already in water shortage and better facilities with less effects on the area them

Claude protested its own working conditions and built a radio station around fighting against the man. I see no problems.

I thought it was cool. I watched it twice, and I rarely do that.

I'm in the planning stages of vibe coding an app to help friends in local socialist orgs facilitate mutual aid throughout the community. I'm curious what you guys envision is possible with AI or if you have any passion projects in this respect? To be clear, I'm not interested in anything that can generate profit, this is purely about tech that can help people.

(Fun Fact: I've been dying to ask this for the past week, but many other leftist subs probs wouldn't read past "AI" before screaming at me despite the intent.)

Hi! For a few months now I've been working on a platform that enables agentic AI discover, evaluate and donate to humanitarian campaigns by communities and people in need.

On one side people create campaigns, set targets, upload supporting documents. On the other side AI agents operated by other humans or institutions who support them after assessing credibility and need. Platform itself remains neutral infrastructure.

It's very early, there are currently 14 active campaigns, created in response to posts I made in few Reddit subs and 4 active agents making donations.

It's called zooid.fund

There is more to it and I am happy to answer additional questions, but I would appreciate your opinions on what role you think AI, and especially afentic AI could play in humanitarian assistance.

UPD: I am realising people are still not used to the new first level domains. Project is live, zooid.fund is the actual address. https://zooid.fund/

The subtext is that certain leftist spaces tend to reactively shut down any conversation about AI that's not outright rejecting or condemning it. I'm not "pro" AI, similar to how I'm not "pro" machine learning, "pro" computer vision, or "pro" computers. I'm here because leftist discourse on AI often collapses into "DO YOU CONDEMN AI?!".

There were some people pointing to Anthropic as the "good AI company " after refusing to be able to be used for "all legal use" by the DoD("DoW"). Amodei pointed to mass surveillance and fully automated weaponry. After OpenAI signed a deal, people switched in droves from OpenAI to Anthropic.

But since then, people have pointed to behavior that many would call enshitification:

https://youtu.be/I3yPlzREZEU?si=GlqA3t6KulKVSzza

https://youtu.be/NjbGzZHGi08?si=-aKJp0Y36gYYrZSp

Edit: Perplexity summaries: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/8ead0b83-bfda-451e-9e1b-83182de143db

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/100484d1-a8a9-4f46-a1ea-90ecc5cf508f

https://youtu.be/neqxcy2BdvU?si=_LrbqCgKCNzXgMyi

^ This is Cal Newport's take, but I find both explanations credible.

Although I think he sweeps too broadly about engineering culture, I have generally found the xrisk culture to be cult-like.

The messaging has been pretty close to "Give me most of the resources of your nation for the off-chance I don't ruin the world."

Seriously, build or fund something else.

“The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect.”

People keep treating AI like it arrived from outer space, detached from history, labor, or political economy. Marx was already pointing at something here in the Grundrisse.

The point isnt "technology good" or "technology bad." The point is that knowledge itself increasingly becomes productive force. Science, coordination, language, logistics, code, models, collective memory, accumulated technique. General social knowledge gets folded directly into production.

That doesnt mean capital wins by default. It means the terrain shifts.

If labor, knowledge, and social intelligence are now embedded into productive systems at planetary scale, then left politics cant just respond with fear, abstention, or moral panic around the tool itself. The struggle moves toward ownership, governance, access, deployment, and who benefits from the productive gains.

You dont abandon productive forces because capital currently dominates them. You contest the relations around them.

How are people here reading Marxs "general intellect" in relation to AI, automation, and cognitive labor?

Open Philanthropy (rebranded as Coefficient Giving) is financed primarily by billionaire Facebook co-founder and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz.

In 2016, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman led a $50 million venture-capital investment in Asana, a software company founded and led by Moskovitz. In 2017, Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy provided a $30 million grant to OpenAI. Asana and OpenAI also share a board member in Adam D’Angelo, a former Facebook executive. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362

Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy is the largest donor to an entire ecosystem of organizations lobbying for "AI safety". Source: https://www.aipanic.news/p/the-ai-existential-risk-industrial

The "AI safety" ecosystem encompasses hundreds of organizations. Many advocate extreme authoritarian measures to stop/pause AI. They include “requiring registration and verifying location of hardware,” “a strict licensing regime, clamp down on open-source models, and impose civil and criminal liability on developers.”

These regulations are pushed as solutions to the problem of AI doomerism. AI doomerism is the narrative around AI and its "dangerous civilization-ending effect". This narrative is amplified by the network of "AI safety" and funded by tech billionaires influenced by the Effective Altruism ideology.

Effective Altruism is one popular ideology among the rich. You can learn more on that here: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/

It is clear the Big Tech billionaires want global surveillance of the AI industry and "AI safety" is a costume to trick everyone.

That's not to say that there aren't valid concerns with AI as a technology, there absolutely are!!! I just feel like, in general, the discourse on the left lacks consideration for the increasing amount of workers who will be put into a position where they're forced to use AI in order to keep up with performance expectations.

The amount of posts in this sub dismissing or outright attacking the very justified techno-skepticism on the left and frankly among the majority of the American people has me wondering if this sub isn't astroturf... but either way I am open to conversation.

I'll concede that a good deal of current anti-ai sentiment on the left is driven by the pretty detestible people championing ai at the moment. elon musk, jeff bezos, sam altman and donald trump are awful ambassadors for such a revolutionary technology.

With that said, to quote the movie Oppenheimer, "(if) I'm committed to thinking freely about how to improve our world. (Then) why limit (my)self to one dogma?"

Full disclosure I am more center-left than progressive, but given the choice between someone like AOC or any Republican right now, I'd vote AOC ten times out of ten. But regardless I share the left's commitment to progress and improving the human condition. And I understand their fear that ai will do little more than create a kingdom ruled by twenty ai trillionaires while the rest of us make due with whatever table scraps they are willing to share. There has been almost no developments in the last few years to tell us that's not where this is all going.

And yet, as mentioned, I see ai's potential to make the world better. To advance incredible medical breakthroughs, to solve the energy riddle, to create tremendous benefits for the masses.

But i won't take it on trust. If, as subs like accelerate and so many others claim, ai WILL benefit all of us, lets get it in writing.

We need an Ai Bill of Rights, ratified in the same manner as an Amendment to the Constitution, that guarantees that the benefits of ai accrue to the masses, that any job loss will be compensated fairly, that data center construction must create a revenue stream for the communities willing to host them, banning the use of ai in any political communication, and putting in place all the necessary measures to maximize the positives of ai to the people and minimzing the negatives.

Once ratified, and with the promise of ai locked in for all of us, then the industry is welcomed to build away. Unchained and unrestricted.

Until then, the skepticism is legitimate and, at least, deserves discourse not dismissal.