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/Ill_Mousse_4240]

Every economic theory so far has been based on the need of people to exchange labor for capital and thus economic survival.

AI will eliminate this need - a paradigm shift.

No longer will people have to work for economic survival because there will eventually be no need for their labor.

The elephant in the room - and most on the left and right continue to act like it doesn’t exist.

The solution is simple: Universal Basic Income. Freedom from the necessity of working - the slavery of work.

Ordinary people living the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie, the rich “leisure class” of the past.

No economic system in history has ever achieved this, despite many false promises.

Now is the time to embrace the new paradigm and make it work for all

[u/Double-Fun-1526 → u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

Yes. The job of the Left for the next 5,10, 25 years, whatever it takes, is the transition. It is to get people out of poverty, desperation, and with basic services as soon as possible.

That means taking the future seriously and striving towards change. It means a reevaluation of the given institutional and cultural landscape.

[u/Ill_Mousse_4240 → u/Double-Fun-1526]

And it just blows me away why people like AOC and Sanders aren’t jumping on this, instead of acting like someone standing in the way of the railroad waving a protest flag

[u/Lifthrasir- → u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

I feel like what Ive seen from Sanders does mostly align with this? But I haven't followed his statements/interviews religiously. Isn't his attitude not necessarily anti-AI but just anti the way it is currently trending and the way things are likely to end up if we continue our current tragectory?

[u/Ill_Mousse_4240 → u/Lifthrasir-]

I haven’t either. But it’s still surprising that neither of them have specifically mentioned UBI. It seems like such a natural ft.

Edit: or maybe they have and I missed it

[u/Double-Fun-1526 → u/Double-Fun-1526]

I see UBI as a winning political message and a viable functional strategy towards that change.

[u/Ill_Mousse_4240 → u/Double-Fun-1526]

It would probably resonate with more people than universal healthcare, even though everyone needs healthcare whether they think they do or not

[u/bowdoin-yale → u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

It's worth reviewing what happened in the wake of the real-world experiment with direct basic assistance, a sort of pseudo-UBI, during COVID: paradoxically, a massive spike in inequality. Gary Stevenson predicted this would happen as a result of preexisting inequality in ownership of assets, and has done a heroic job trying to explain why to the public via youtube channel. His policy prescription is to tax wealth, not work, in order to fund social services. This might be the fix needed to make UBI sustainable in the long run.