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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. AI is not intrinsically capitalist, it isn't about cedeing autonomy. AI is trained on a bunch of inputs, and spits out an output based on nudging. It isn't intrinsically capital, it's just a tool that can do some things and can't do others. I think the way you view capitalism is fundamentally different from the way Marxists view capitalism, and this is the crux of the miscommunication here.
Literally the only thing AI does is cause its users to cede autonomy. Its only function is to act as a (poor) facsimile of human cognitive processing and resultant output (edit: perhaps more accurate to say its function is to replace decision-making). This isn't a hammer, it's a political artifact, as Ali Alkhatib's essay 'Defining AI' describes.
AI is, quite literally, a tool that approximates an output based on its training and prompting. It isn't a political artifact or anything metaphysical.
AI is a process, a way of producing, it is not a tool. The assumptions baked into that process are political in nature.
I really don't follow, something like Deepseek is quite literally a program trained on inputs that spits out an output depending on prompts. It isn't inherently political, in that its relation to production depends on the social role it plays. Again, a hammer isn't always capital, it is if that's the role it plays.
And that social role is, at least in part, to advance the idea that communication and cognition can be replicated by statistically analyzing an enormous amount of input text, while ignoring the human and social context and conditions that actual communication takes place in. How can that not be considered political?
The social role of a tool depends on its relation to the overarching mode of production, it isn't a static thing intrinsic to a tool. AI doesn't care about advancing any ideas, it's just a thing that exists, and its use is up to how humans use it. This seems to be all very idealist and not materialist of you.
If I made a tool which literally said to you, out loud in a tinny computerised voice, "cognitive effort isn't worth it, why are you bothering to try", would it be fair to say it was putting forward the idea that cognitive effort isn't worth it and why bother trying?
If so, what's the difference when that statement is implied by the functioning of the AI system?
The existence of AI itself does not imply anything. It's a tool. The social function of AI is determined by the mode of production.
Want to know how I know that it does?
Because the result is the same over and over and over and over and over again. Every single time!
https://restofworld.org/2025/colombia-meta-ai-education/
The AI is not suggesting anything ny virtue of being itself. The social consequences of a given tool depend on the way society is structured, based on the mode of production.
I dunno what to tell you other than that I have been consistently pointing out that AI is a process, not a tool.
If the result of that process is the same wherever it's introduced, then your model of the world has to be able account for that.
You're ascribing metaphysical messages to objects, which I reject the notion of. AI is just a program, a type of one. The social interpretations of its use depend on the mode of production of society.
I reject metaphysics and idealism in general outright.