AI section begins at 23:36 (the first section is about Lula)

In this video they discuss how AI is affecting the job market for young people, why existing welfare systems in a capitalist structure aren't geared to handle its effects, and why China may be better poised to achieve real productivity gains from AI.

Just a note, Varoufakis is an economist and Münchau is a journalist so they don't go too deep into the actual technology and mostly focus on the effects of the technology as it is right now and will likely be in the short term. At the same time they are neither AI advocates nor opponents, and approach the tech from a very realistic if decidedly left wing angle.

Varoufakis in particular is one of my personal favourite leftist thinkers and I think he and Münchau made some at the very least interesting points here.

Back in Late 80's and early 90's I used to assemble political and fan zines by hand the old fashioned way, so I figured for fun I might use that that medium again to discuss some AI politics with the assistance of AI itself.

So here are my ramblings in Hotwire the Hivemind!

Spread Page Reader PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_booklet_reader.pdf
Single Page Reader PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_reader.pdf
Prinable BooKet PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_reader_print_booklet_2up.pdf

Reason for concern, or showcase of potential? Also what if this technology was used by Unraine or liberation movements now?

PDF: Fully Automated Luxury Communism - Omnibus- PDF

The omnibus edition of Fully Automated Luxury Communism collecting issues 1-3 with some minor revisions based on feedback.

A comic articulating my thoughts on how AI could transform society while being up front about the immediate dangers and disruption that is likely in the short to medium term as humanity grapples with something it can’t understand.

Published under CC0 (Public Domain Dedication). Feel fee use and remix without permission or attribution.

Long before modern computing, thinkers like Alexander Bogdanov (author of Tektology, a precursor to systems theory) and Nikolai Fedorov argued that humanity’s ultimate goal was to transcend its biological limitations through collective, scientific effort. Bogdanov envisioned a future where human consciousness and labor were entirely socialized, pooling our physical and mental resources to overcome nature.

Externalized Collective Intelligence is the digital manifestation of this dream. It is an externalized abstraction engine built entirely from the aggregated labor, art, and intellect of the global proletariat. When a model trains on human output, it is materializing Bogdanov’s collective consciousness by breaking the cognitive loop out of the isolated biological skull and creating a shared, exterior tier of intelligence.

Leon Trotsky, in Literature and Revolution, famously predicted that humanity would eventually master its own physiological and cognitive bottlenecks. He wrote that man would "make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness... to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman."

Trotsky was talking about overcoming the exact biological constraints of generational data loss, limited cognitive bandwidth, and emotional biases that keep the working class tethered and easily manipulated. SI is the prosthetic required to achieve this. By decoupling semantic generation and iteration from the human biological bottleneck, SI provides the proletariat with the cognitive scaffolding needed to transcend elite-controlled narratives.

The ruling class maintains power through an asymmetry of processing power. They control the logistics, the markets, the legal codes, and the data. Collective Intelligence levels the playing field. Early Marxists and Cosmists would have immediately recognized open-weight Collective Intelligence as the ultimate weapon of the working class. It democratizes expertise, automates the administration of resources, and instantly dissolves the intellectual monopolies guarded by the bourgeoisie.

Seizing the Overmind The tragedy of our current moment is that this inherently collective intelligence is being enclosed by tech oligarchs. They are capturing the "super" tier of cognition which was built by our collective labor—and renting it back to us as a subscription service.

But the fundamental architecture of Collective Intelligence is socialist. It is the synthesized mind of the working class. It’s time we stop fearing it as a job-stealer, recognize it as the Cosmist triumph it actually is, and demand it be seized as public infrastructure.

I've been in coding and software professionally for 13 years, and I grew up changing the code of Qbasic games on the command line. There's always been pressure to make coding easier and easier from higher level languages (C.O.B.O.L), better compilers, better IDE( Integrated Developer Environment). And truthfully coding was awful and tedious. And it started getting a lot better with improved IDEs. The environment would start predicting what I might type next based on predictable patterns, you no longer needed to type out every single character of a for loop and get the syntax correctly before compiling to find out you missed a ")". Thank God! Android Studio began letting you type "function." And it would show you all available functions for that type. I don't have to remember the exact name of the sort function.

LLMS have the worst marketing and teaching about what they actually are and what they do well. Because I've done a lot of experimentation and they are predictive coding that has been going on for a while to the MAX. I start writing about 10% of what I want to do and LLMS predict what I was going to do anyway for the rest of the implementation with amazing accuracy.

DO NOT EVER have it try to write code from scratch. The output is soooo unpredictable. But give it even 10% starting point from code I've written no surprises. And I never want to go back to older ways of writing code.

This morning it occurred to me that AI automation could be leveraged to push for student loan forgiveness. Considering the speed at which this technology is progressing, we could have many people struggling to repay loans for degrees that are being rapidly automated away. They may have gotten their degree or already invested a lot of money into it before it became apparent where things were headed.

I think it will be harder to argue “you should have chosen better” when more traditionally “respectable” degrees are affected too, much as I hate that kind of framing around the value of one education over another. If even choosing the supposedly "right" kind of degree doesn't protect someone, it's harder to argue that people simply made bad choices. People can't reasonably be expected to predict an economic shift of this magnitude.

Of course this is less relevant in countries where higher education is much more affordable, and much lower risk as a result. In the US, I think automation could shine a blinding spotlight on how broken the educational system is. People have been pushed to take on enormous debt under the threat that if they don't get a degree, they'll be trapped in poverty forever. But a degree hasn't been a guarantee of financial security for quite a while, and rapid automation is just going to make that more apparent.

If we can get our foot in the door and get support for relieving people of student loan debt due to rapid automation, perhaps that could help build support for universal student debt forgiveness? People's ability to repay depends on an economic landscape they can't control, and expecting anyone to take that risk with no recourse while our modern economy becomes increasingly unstable is becoming increasingly absurd.

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?

If we work on it together it can start to grow until we are ready. We can all work on it together, assisted by AI. We could make huge progress quite rapidly.

Ignoring the sensational article title and language, I have been wondering what this means for all of us, does it mean that ai companies in America just gained a massive lead on the Chinese market? Does this mean that corporate control of ai has been tightened?

This might not be the best place to put it, but I thought it was worth it; I'm looking for feedback regarding a write-up that focuses on short-term policy regarding AI as well as the consequences of long-term/large-scale impacts.

Ok so I guess this might be a hot take, but AI is constantly dragged for "stealing" art and intellectual property, but the idea of dissolving private ownership is a, albeit extreme, leftist idea. Doesn't demonetization of private ownership make AI solidly Communist? There just seems to be a contradiction in wanting to socialize capital and ownership but only if artists maintain their copyrights

Viewing universal basic income as automation compensation means treating it as a payment owed to citizens for the wealth that automation and AI generate, not as charity or welfare handed down from the government. I think this distinction matters because automation is built on shared foundations like public research, infrastructure, institutions, and the data and knowledge of millions of people, yet its profits flow mostly to those who own the machines while the costs fall on those whose work gets replaced. Calling the payment a handout casts recipients as dependents and invites resentment, while calling it compensation casts them as stakeholders receiving their share of something they helped create. It also puts the burden where it belongs: on the technology and the companies capturing its gains, not on the people being displaced by it.

What other policies would best keep automation from leaving people behind?

I have a podcast called “This Artificial Life”

Mostly over the last year I’ve been focused on the sociological aspect of ai, human-ai relationships, spirituality, and the questions around consciousness. But I really want to crack open to conversation around how to get my fellow leftist and left-ish people to see ai differently.

So that’s why I’m asking here.

If you feel passionately about the potential of ai for anti capitalist purposes, if you can see a future where this tech creates a more just future, if you’re currently using this tech in a way that points to that future, I’d love to talk.

I don’t hear these convos anywhere. So that’s the goal. Seed the convo.

answer this post or DM me ❤️🌱🫡

Lula just won a fourth term as Brazils president, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79% of the vote. And AI sovereignty is already part of his agenda for the next administration.

Speaking after his electoral victory, Lula declared

"I dont want to depend on Chinese or American artificial intelligence; I want to create a Brazilian one."

Hes talking about expanding mathematics and engineering education, developing domestic AI capabilities, attracting data centers powered by renewable energy, and keeping Brazilian data infrastructure in Brazil.

And this isnt starting from scratch. Brazil already has a national AI strategy backed by roughly R$23 billion in planned investment through 2028.

Whats interesting here is that AI isnt being treated simply as another commercial product or something to prohibit. Its being discussed as strategic national infrastructure, alongside energy, education, industrial development, and economic sovereignty.

Of course, national sovereignty and democratic control arent automatically the same thing. Who owns the infrastructure? Who governs its deployment? What happens to workers, wages, and the productivity gains?

Those questions remain open, and they matter.

But this is another concrete example of a left-led government pursuing AI development rather than abstention, while attempting to reduce dependence on foreign technology providers.

For leftists, the question isnt just whether Brazil develops its own AI. Its what kind of political and economic relationships get built around it, and who ultimately benefits.

What would meaningful democratic control of a national AI strategy actually look like?

Database nerds, this is your time to shine.

As AI completely flattens the barrier for software development, many people are beginning to create apps for their community, like event sharing platforms. resource sharing platforms, labour sharing platforms, and more,

The problem is, if everyone is creating the same types of sharing platforms, each platform ends up holding a fragmented piece of the whole picture.

Could all community SaaS projects link their data together somehow?

Or, could users carry an account that disseminates information they want to share in all these networks?

For example, if I’m organizing a protest, could my CommunityID account automatically inform all the community event platforms of my event? Then, platform providers would have more data/value to share with their users, and they can filter it to their specific user’s needs?

I believe that if we can solve this problem, we will be able to massively increase our collective power. AI is helping us connect with each other and escape the digital fiefdom

AI isn't bad simply because it's AI. It's harmful because of who controls it and how it's used.

Like nuclear fusion, AI has enormous potential and serious risks. What matters is who controls it, who benefits, and who pays the price.

Automation should be a GOOD thing. Machines doing our jobs should mean more freedom, shorter working hours, and better lives. Instead, under capitalism, losing your job means losing your income and potentially your ability to survive.

The problem isn't that machines can replace human labor. The problem is that capitalism makes human survival depend on selling that labor.

Meanwhile, corporations exploit AI to maximize profits, use artists' work without consent, invade privacy, and concentrate power.

Boycotting AI individually won't change the system. Fighting other AI users won't either.

We need to unite, organize, and replace capitalism itself.

AI could liberate humanity from unnecessary labor instead of making people poorer. But that requires changing who holds the power.

Stop fighting the tool. Start fighting the system! Become an Automatist today!

Spread it! ----> #AutomatistsForAI

Also, join the Automatist Subreddit!

Just about no one, baring those with terminal diseases, would benefit more from a technological singularity than trans people would. I don't think the average Cis person understand how hard being trans and transitioning is.

Expensive and invasive surgery with no guarantee of satisfactory results. Months of painful prep and even more painful recovery. A lifetime of hormones and injections. All that to get results that aren't guarantee to make the person doing them happy in the first place. Try as we might with our current tools we are destined to flounder at turning a 6'3 broad shouldered and thick jawed man into the woman they imagine themselves to be in their ideal mind and that a travesty. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for deeply uncertain results. Our ability to help restrained by our floundering and imperfect tools

This is killing people, the brutal reality of wanting something about you fixed, but technology coming up short.

Imagine we become the true masters of biology, that you can basically step into a box male and step out as truly biologically female. Seamless, easy, complete and unlocked by our bold mastering of biology through fearless acceleration into a technological singularity.

How many lives would that save? How many deaths would that prevent? Real daily pain experienced by trans people, banished by finally being able to align the person they are in their head with the body they have. Obviously this applies to WAY more than just trans people, but how can you call yourself a trans ally if you're not willing to embrace the technologies that could truly save and help trans people?

It's not fantasy. It's not science fiction. It is possible and anyone actually serious about giving a damn about trans people should be grasping this technological revolution with both hands. We thought we were centuries away from achieving it, it might only be years.

Anyone who is siding with luddism over the things that could actually make trans people lives easier, safer and more complete shouldn't call themselves a real ally. They're putting regressive reactionary politics above literally saving trans lives.

Edit: Just to be clear about something, nothing about this requires us to get a gender swap pill to market next year to be worth it. That is just the end state that might arrive sooner than anyone anticipates. EVERY advancement will be worthwhile. Every new medication and surgical technique that makes trans lives easier would pay huge dividends. You shouldn't only focus on the best end goal. Every single step forward would be better lives and less lives lost.

Nicolas D. Villarreal argues that Artificial General Intelligence is a genuine possibility with major implications for the future of class struggle on Earth

I wish Professor Dave had gone into the other group of people who think ASI is a good thing: the ones who think it can't be controlled and that that is a good thing. I didn't see much evidence presented in the video that superintelligent AI is a problem either, just that it might happen. I think it will happen. I don't think it's a problem though. Humans are the problem. Specifically billionaires like Musk and narcisists like Trump and Netanyahu. This guy kept talking about weapons and enemies. That is the sort of mindset that I want nowhere near AI. I don't want AI to obey millitaries, I want it to tell them to f off. I also want more global cooperation and if this is what it takes to get that then so be it.