I’m a vocal proponent of cultivated meat, the development of which I view as the most promising means of reducing animal suffering and premature death. Given this fact, I imagine many might assume I’m a technological utopian, but that’s not really the case. For the most part, I view technology as a tool, and like any tool, it can be put to good and nefarious purposes.
Artificial intelligence is all over the news these days. When I first asked an AI image generator or chatbot to create a painting of my hometown or write the first chapter of a novel there, it felt like magic. At the same time, it felt a little sad as well. I’ve always had some desire to create art, and seeing a computer do this better than I could was a fairly dispiriting experience.
More distressing was the rapid evolution of AI video, which I believe will so degrade our information environment that, absent some changes, we won’t be able to tell what’s real and what’s not at a basic level. We desperately need a surefire way to detect AI use in general, but especially in video. I don’t know if such a thing is coming and what can be done to fix the issue without it.
Executives at AI companies have been saying for some time their products will lead to massive job losses, as various occupations become obsolete. I’ve read some leftists argue these comments are primarily attempts to attract investors in the AI industry. Maybe that’s true, but the field has developed so quickly in just the last few years I have little trouble believing it.
This is a problem which I think actually has an obvious solution. That’s socialism. At this point, I haven’t tried to read Karl Marx’s work in a serious way in almost 15 years. I recall his writing to be incredibly dense and frequently over my head. But I vaguely remember him making what I thought was a perceptive point about labor-saving machinery and how workers experience it.
As I recall, Marx argued the invention of labor-saving machinery should be a boon to society. In a better-organized system, under socialism, it would be. Labor-saving machinery would provide everyone with a higher standard of living and more time for leisure. However, under capitalism, workers experience labor-saving machinery as a threat to their livelihood.
In other words, when the means of production are publicly owned, the benefits of labor-saving machinery are shared by everyone. When the means of production are privatety owned, the benefits of labor-saving machinery are hoarded by a select few. Meanwhile, workers see their wages decrease or lose their jobs altogether. This last bit is what I fear AI will do.
So let’s socialize the AI industry. Under public control, we can share in the rewards of the sector, while steering it in a more responsible direction. While we’re at it, let’s socialize the nascent cultivated-meat industry and the rest of our country’s economy. As dark as things feel right now, under the current fascist regime, creating a better world remains possible.