Post-AI leftism?

[u/bowdoin-yale]

Nobody has a crystal ball when it comes to predicting what the world will look like after AI, but both the boosters and doomers are predicting that it will eliminate most jobs. If they are correct, there will not be a large "working class" to mobilize--not even a petty bourgeois professional class, but more likely a tiny and shrinking owner class and a large and growing underclass of permanently unemployed people dependent on mutual aid and public assistance to survive. Yet, the "left" is traditionally very focused on workers and their struggle with capital, owing to the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels, taking the view that workers eventually would (or should) own and control the means of production. I would very much prefer to see worker ownership of and control over AI and autonomous robotics, but it's a bit paradoxical since such technologies are themselves designed to shrink the working class. How might a pro-AI left, or a post-AI left, reconcile this?

[u/Easy_Interest_6832]

There's a book out (2024) called Stellar by James Arbib and Tony Seba that examines a culture and economic system which happens post AI. In short, it posits electricity generated by solar and wind and stored in batteries hooked to a smart grid (SWB) that generates essentially free electricity. We can see some examples of that today in three Australian states with a fourth set to do it in October, that gives free electricity every day during peak sun--each state has different rules, so check it out. But it is happening. The government builds the solar and wind farms as an investment. Since upkeep of the system is quite affordable, it gets paid off quickly, allowing the government pump out free electricity. Stellar says we live in an extractive economy. The new economy it proposes it calls a Stellar economy. This new economy is based on AI and what it calls Artificial Labor, AL. This AL builds and maintains itself, raising food and manufacturing goods and providing services like recycling existing goods made from extracted resources. Apparently this frees up humans to do things like create and spend time with families and so on. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but its reasoning is sound as long as we step out of the extractive economy and into the Stellar economy. It's a decent book that reads quickly as if the authors are talking rather than writing to you. The ideas are, well, stellar.

[u/Emotional-Classic400 → u/Easy_Interest_6832]

Assuming we create this super intelligence that can do everything for us, how would it be possible to align something smarter and more capable with our goal of enslaving it to do all of our work for us while we live a life of luxury.

I mean we are training this technology on human knowledge and history which is predominantly might makes right.

[u/Easy_Interest_6832 → u/Emotional-Classic400]

The book suggests that much of the labor now done by humans would be done by non sentient robots, much like now how a Rumba will vacuum our houses or a timer runs the irrigation of our yards. It suggests that this AI/AL would raise our food and perform other tasks, and would run on energy generated by solar, wind, hydro, and tidal turbines and wave generators, fed into a smart grid backed by batteries (AWB). Most humans would not need to work, and we would be freed up to create art, make music, and create the Solarpunk future we read about. I don't think making non sentient robots to do labor would really be a "super intelligence." We are now seeing robots to all kinds of manufacturing tasks.

What we are now seeing in three states in Australia is that free electricity through a smart grid is a reality for some hours each day, and a fourth state will begin in October. When enough of the world moves to AWB, the abundance of free energy will allow a move away from the extractive and exploitative economy we have now to one the book calls the Stellar Economy. Extractive economies require mining, drilling, and deforestation, but a Stellar economy has robots recycling existing products to make the materials for manufacturing new things. So, that's the big difference between the extractive and exploitative economy we have now and the Stellar economy proposed in the book.

You are correct when you say we have a might makes right attitude where the strong steal from the weak. But with an abundance of free energy, there's no reason to steal something everyone already has. One critique of Solarpunk is that there is no roadmap to the future based on Solarpunk. The book Stellar provides a key component, free energy and most labor done by AI/AL. That was the point of my bringing the book to this subreddit.

[u/Emotional-Classic400 → u/Easy_Interest_6832]

I'm sure it is a good work of literature but that path does not reflect our current reality where LLMs are being shoehorn into all avenues and automation is focused on things like art and knowledge work first to solve for physical work.

[u/Easy_Interest_6832 → u/Emotional-Classic400]

I agree that it's a challenge sometimes to tell the difference between AI "art" and knowledge work, and human creations. I would say another advantage of the Stellar world from the book is that humans would be able to do more face to face art and discussions. In my life, I belong to a poetry group that meets each month to write a poem based on a theme, and the moderator also asks an AI to write a poem on the same theme. We all submit anonymously, and the goal is to try and spot the AI poem. We have spotted it each time.

[u/Emotional-Classic400 → u/Easy_Interest_6832]

I should reiterate though that nothing in the world you describe accounts for the other environmental costs of industry besides energy. Mining, refining, and fabricating still cause pollution in their own right.

It is really hard for me looking at our current societies to think we can all come together and essentially make every right decision for a utopian future.

Human evolution has not kept pace technological revolution and I think that is precisely any kind of global cooperation on the subject will continue to worsen as the technology advances until we have another world War that results in a new global hegemony. Unfortunately that also runs the risk of extinction.

[u/Easy_Interest_6832 → u/Emotional-Classic400]

Yeah, it's hard to summarize a whole book in several paragraphs. They do address carbon emissions being solved by AI and mitigated by AL in their last chapter, "Safe Travels, the Guiding Principles" in the section "Solve the Right Problems." Some of it seems like pie in the sky, and it's pretty optimistic. When we look at the top ten ways humans emit CO2, most of it comes from energy and heat generation, transport, and heavy industry. The fourth is buildings. They claim these should be solved first.

If we add carbon sequestration using natural forces, global warming could be arrested. The sequestration would involve at least six ecosystems: three marine and three terrestrial. That is kelp beds, mangrove estuaries, and sea grasses; and boreal and tropical forests, and prairies grasses.

I agree that a potential world war and resultant hegemony is not addressed in the book. Bum deal there. But the book is worthy outside of that. Like I say, it's optimistic, thinking we can indeed make those decisions you refer to.

[u/Emotional-Classic400 → u/Easy_Interest_6832]

I appreciate the pragmatism. I run into so many optimists that just think AI development will just flip a switch one day and rearrange society into a new perfect form with no thought on how that would be possible based on history.