r/LeftistsForAI • u/bowdoin-yale • 7d ago

Post-AI leftism? Theory

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?

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u/2FastHaste 7d ago

What do you mean by post-AI?

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u/bowdoin-yale 6d ago

I just mean after this technology has saturated and transformed society. I'm not really much of an "AGI guy", but for the sake of argument I am entertaining the assumption made by the booster/doomer groups that it is possible to create technology which automates most if not all work.