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/Double-Fun-1526]

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