Focusing on AI is really a distraction. LLMs are just a tool, and it's a tool that can clearly do a lot of useful work. The problem is the capitalist system of relations, and how this tool is being developed and applied within this system. As Marxists, we should be able to do at least this basic level of analysis here instead of devolving into reactionary thinking.

bro out here acting like AI is indoor plumbing or smth

Imagine if AI was suddenly banned

I work at a rural animal hospital. We do not have a computer. Or a fax machine. Our filing system was invented some time in the late 18th century. All our records are hand written in physical filing cabinets. I think I will be fine.

It's a goofy premise to begin with cause there are plenty of inventions that can be lived without. You can, for example, go live on a farm with minimal use of tech and it will mainly only become a problem when you need modern medicine. Now if you have options in that way and so are cosplaying at being pre-tech, that's more like tourism than it is actually living in the era before stuff was made or living in a region where access to the stuff is minimal.

Furthermore, gen AI (cause that's usually what people mean when they are anti) is not yet integrated into society as essential, so naturally it will be relatively easy for people to say "yeah I can live without it." If you asked the same about cars when cars are still a rare thing, you'd probably get a lot who say the same. And considering the environmental consequences of tons of people having individual gas guzzling cars, you could probably argue from an ecosystem-protecting standpoint that they never should have proliferated. But they did and by this point, they are, for many, integrated as essential for getting around (they shouldn't have to be when high speed trains are an option to build, but capitalism keeps holding society back).

So sometimes it's less about the technology itself and more about how society has developed around the technology - or in this case, has not really done yet beyond superficial application, making the concept of giving it up seem trivial. This doesn't on its own say to what extent the given tech is helpful or harmful, it just means it hasn't been integrated much. People are more willing to defend something they take for granted as normal, especially if they grew up with it.

Whether you can personally do with or without AI is hardly a Marxist analysis.

I'm a butcher. I do not use AI as part of my daily workflow. Claude cannot yet trim a steak.

"are you hopelessly reliant on our product enough to not be able to think yet?"

Yeah. I work a dumb low end white collar job, the thing it's suppose to help with, and I don't use it for work. I tried. It sucks even at writing emails cuz it lacks intentionality.

At most, I've used to ask for an Excel formula cuz they've shittified search engines

Marx would encourage you to seize power. In reading about Marx's take on the Luddites today I got the impression that times of automation led by capitalists highlights the antagonism between the Bougie and the Workers in the sense that the introduction of the mill likely indirectly killed 100,000's of people by its implementation. Marx goes on to suggest a socialist mode of automation that scientifically analyses the amount of money needed to compensate a worker made redundant by automation.

In times like these its either take political power or allow yourself to be crushed by unemployment.

He even mentions how when the mill was first introduced, the people burned it down, and they kept burning it down till they learned to blame the capitalists rather than the machines.

It's too bad this scenario isn't going to happen. The cat's out of the bag. The technology isn't going to go away because you want it to, or because you hate it so much. It's a tool at the end of the day, that isn't doing anything more than what capitalism has been fucking doing for decades now.

All the people who are anti-crack or want to slow the flow of crack, I have one question:

If crack disappeared tomorrow, could you still get through am entire workday without crack, cocain or any other stimulant?

Imagine crack was suddenly banned. Would you be willing to give it up?

Full automation and Communism can't come soon enough. That way nobody will ever have to work again.

You all are just the Silesian weavers and don’t realize it yet. Any new technology will be used to harm the working class and increase the capacity of the state to enforce the dictate of the ruling class.

LLM’s are not evil in itself.

i think i can get a rock and still be able to mill grain

I work in the advertising industry as a designer and a lot of people constantly use it. I do use it sometimes but pretty rarely for video generation, if ai just disappeared i would actually be happy because now we are just producing slop after slop and nobody cares about it here its crazy, not the employees or the customers, the managment loves it obviously. I feel like im the only one in my country that is anti ai

The last time I used AI was to generate an image like 4 years ago, chuck it in the bin.

honestly, the main use of LLMs is like agentic shit like cybersecurity shit, cause you have a pretty direct relationship between more agent resources -› more code bases searched for vulnerabilities and then able to quickly piece shit together to attack. that's a damn niche thing (with big impact, but still), and yeah, the chat bot and image generation stuff is just parlor tricks to justify interest in it to the lay person

so, yeah, everyday person does not need LLMs

yet another hit in the inter instance AI vs anti ai war...

It’s the biggest MLM scheme as far as I can tell. People join this bandwagon for free.

I dunno, almost every job I've ever had has involved looking things up on a daily or hourly basis. I've still never even had the idea pop into my head to involve AI. Nothing about it sounds appealing or useful.

Great post title. =) I think I'm pretty comfortable in saying Marx wouldn't care. Neither do I. The extent of my AI usage is based around Google lens. And since AI was integrated into it, I spend more time arguing with it than getting answers.

No Google, I want to know what model of binoculars these are. They are not a massage device, they are not a medical device, and they certainly aren't a food preparation device. Telling me that I've misidentified them is infuriating, and marks a dramatic step back from the pre-AI Lens.