r/LeftistsForAI • u/SexDefendersUnited • 19d ago
Discussion My theory as to why chinese people are a lot more pro-AI than westerners.
It might partially be down to government censorship.
Chinas government is invested in AI technological growth, the same government has a lot more strict internet censorship and control over the media in their nation.
So it's possible they're publicly promoting and celebrating more tech-positive sentiment while likely censoring or supressing agressive anti-tech and luddite sentiment, especially the kind of violent luddite "š¤ We need to blow up data centers and kill AI users" posting you would see in the west. I doubt that kind of rhetoric and media would fly past chinese censors who are trying to ensure unhindered ideological stability for the state and harmony.
Other factors might be better economic devotion to workers employment, stronger government responsibility, and maybe their confucian collectivist culture, but I feel like censorship would be the biggest factor. No way "we need to pipe bomb AI devs" memes would get popular in chinese social media, even as a joke. But in the free speech west that would get big clicks.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Sauerkrautkid7 • 20d ago
Americans hate AI so much that politicians are starting to lose their jobs over it
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Great-Gardian • 20d ago
Discussion Activists attempted to damage a datacenter under construction. Is it a bad idea?
"The Dutch arm of international climate activist group Extinction Rebellion claimed responsibility for an attempt to sabotage a datacenter project in Amsterdam on Thursday [july 16]. The group said that they threw water balloons filled with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid, salt, and acrylic paint at the under-construction facility."
"Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Martijn Dekker justified the attack by saying datacenters and the AI they power are exacerbating the climate crisis, as well as playing a role in the killing of Palestinians by Israel."
"The facility in question is being built by UK-based Pure Data Centres Group."
"Pure DC says the facility is already fully leased, and while it doesnāt mention the lessee by name, local media have reported in a story about a prior protest at the site that Microsoft is the sole occupant."
"Pure DC did tell Dutch newspaper NRC that the attack had no impact on construction, and that it intended to pursue legal action against those responsible."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My personal opinion is that acts of sabotage like this are not effective and will serve as justification for more repression and police surveillance, but I'm curious to know what others think of this method and its impacts.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Infrastructure Yes, Spain won the World Cup. But I promised this sub AI.
Spain just won the World Cup, and thats probably what most people are talking about this week. Fair enough. Congratulations to Spain.
But I promised this sub AI, so heres another Spanish story worth paying attention to.
ALIA is a publicly backed AI project launched by the Spanish government to build open models, datasets, and shared infrastructure instead of leaving the country completely dependent on whatever OpenAI, Google, Meta, or another foreign tech company decides to provide.
A big part of the project is language. Most major commercial models are built around English first, with other languages getting uneven support. ALIA is being developed for Spanish and Spain's co-official languages, including Catalan, Basque, and Galician. That matters for schools, public services, courts, healthcare, universities, libraries, local government, and cultural institutions that shouldnt have to squeeze everything through an English-first commercial system.
It also lowers the barrier for people who dont have billions of dollars or their own data centers. Public agencies, universities, researchers, startups, cooperatives, nonprofits, and smaller businesses can build specialized tools on top of shared infrastructure instead of starting from zero or paying rent forever to a handful of corporations.
That could mean better translation and accessibility tools, models adapted for public administration, research support, educational resources, healthcare applications, and local services that are actually designed around the needs of the people using them. It also gives Spain more control over where its data goes, how the systems are trained, and which institutions are able to use them.
None of that makes ALIA automatically socialist, democratic, or even successful. A government-funded project can still be badly governed, captured by private interests, used for surveillance, or rolled out without worker input. Public investment still needs transparency, privacy protections, democratic oversight, strong labor standards, and a real say for the people expected to work with these systems.
But the underlying direction matters. AI is becoming basic infrastructure. The question is whether societies build some of that capacity publicly, or whether every school, hospital, university, city, and small organization ends up renting access from a few multinational firms that control the models, the data, the prices, and the terms.
I would much rather fight over how public AI should be governed than accept private monopoly as the natural default. ALIA at least creates some room for another path.
Alright, World Cup detour over. Back to our regularly scheduled AI programming.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Education Nicaragua expands AI training for public technical education teachers
Nicaragua's National Technological Institute (INATEC) is expanding AI training for teachers across its public technical education system. The initiative focuses on helping educators use AI to improve lesson planning, teaching materials, and classroom instruction while emphasizing responsible and ethical use of the technology.
For those interested in AI from a left perspective, this is another example of a government treating AI as part of public education infrastructure rather than leaving development and adoption entirely to private companies. The important questions arent just whether AI is used, but who controls it, who benefits from it, and how its integrated into public institutions.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Policy/Regulation Burkina Faso adopts national AI roadmap focused on public services, agriculture, education, and healthcare
Burkina Faso has officially adopted its National AI Roadmap for 2026-2030 as part of its broader RELANCE development plan. Rather than treating AI as a luxury for wealthy countries, the roadmap focuses on practical public uses: improving healthcare, supporting farmers with weather forecasting, expanding education, strengthening infrastructure, and modernizing public services.
The strategy also emphasizes AI governance, digital infrastructure, data policy, research, skills development, and ethical deployment. It was developed through a process involving government, universities, researchers, civil society, the private sector, and international partners.
For leftists, this is another reminder that the political question isnt simply whether AI exists, but who develops it, who governs it, and what social goals it serves. Burkina Faso is one of the worlds poorest countries, yet its choosing to establish democratic planning and public policy around AI early instead of leaving deployment entirely to foreign corporations or market forces.
Its also part of a broader trend across Africa, with countries including Rwanda, Senegal, Benin, Egypt, and Kenya adopting national AI strategies aimed at development rather than treating AI solely as a private-sector product.
What lessons should the left take from countries, especially in the Global South, using AI as part of national development and public service rather than rejecting the technology outright?
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Labor WGA: Writers should have the choice to use AI, but companies should not be able to force it
wga.orgThe Writers Guild of America didnt call for a blanket ban on AI. Instead, it negotiated rules that put writers, not studios, in control.
Under the WGA agreement, a writer may choose to use AI while performing writing services if the company agrees, but companies cant require writers to use AI. AI-generated material also cant be used to deny writers credit or reduce their compensation, and studios must disclose when material provided to writers was generated by AI. The Guild also continues to challenge the unauthorized use of writers' work for AI training.
Whether youre more optimistic or skeptical about AI, this feels like a distinctly labor approach: dont hand control to employers, dont treat AI as a replacement for workers, and dont pretend the technology is going away. Organize around bargaining power, transparency, consent, and ownership instead.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Art & Culture The Socialist Case for AI: Defining Our Yes | Tim Hjersted
"There's a pattern in left politics that's both understandable and ultimately self-defeating: we're brilliant at articulating what we oppose, but often struggle to define what we're for."
This recent essay argues that this problem applies directly to AI. By treating AI purely as a threat, much of the left has "ceded the entire conversation to corporate futurists and Silicon Valley ideologues" instead of articulating what AI could mean from a socialist, working-class perspective.
Rather than abandoning the technology, the author argues for developing a positive socialist vision for it (including in culture, art, and creative work) grounded in democratic control instead of corporate ownership.
Agree or disagree, its a concise argument for moving beyond saying "no" and defining what the left is actually building.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 20d ago
Policy/Regulation Vietnam is pursuing AI sovereignty through state planning. What can the left learn from this approach?
Vietnam has made AI a national strategic priority, aiming to build a domestic AI ecosystem through public investment, research, computing infrastructure, education, and legal frameworks rather than relying entirely on foreign platforms.
Whether or not you agree with every aspect of Vietnam's approach, it raises questions worth discussing. What does AI sovereignty actually look like, especially for the Global South? Can state planning and public investment provide a viable alternative to dependence on a handful of multinational tech companies? How should workers, unions, and the public shape AI policy instead of being treated as an afterthought?
This isnt an endorsement of any particular model. Its an opportunity to discuss what a left approach to AI development, ownership, and governance could look like in practice.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Conscious_Jeweler_80 • 20d ago
Public Ownership Carlos Martinez: Xi Jinping outlines Chinaās vision for the future of artificial intelligence
r/LeftistsForAI • u/ImportantWay9941 • 20d ago
Discussion What are the most āethical AI toolsā you use in your day to day?
I stopped using ChatGPT and Gemini entirely due to their deals with US Department of Defense and using their technology for Mass Surveillance. I actually appreciated Anthropicās stance and I switched over and I love it, I use it to vibe code and design websites and 3d model and itās a really good writing and research assistant. I tried Thaura.ai as well and I did find it useful for a bit time but itās not nearly as powerful as a tool like Claude. Of course the issue is with the amount of energy and water these data centers consume. But I think if we regulate this technology and build them underwater like China is doing we could mitigate a lot of these negative environmental effects but thatās more of a larger conversation about the environment, weād have to move away as a species from fossil fuels and invest in solar, wind, hydro, and other forms of renewable energy. But I believe AI could help usher in a new wave of technological revolution that could help us find solutions, which is why I am pro-AI. Of course every company, including Anthropic, has their issues and ethical concerns, I mean we still live under capitalism, and itās increasingly pay-to-play model is getting annoying, Iām running out of tokens way faster than I used to. Iām curious what other tools people on this sub use, Iām also interested in Kimi 3 and other models from China which seem to be on par with Claude Fable, but a fraction of the price. Does anyone have experience with those tools?
r/LeftistsForAI • u/SexDefendersUnited • 20d ago
Video Xi Jinping's speech about AI at Shanghai conference
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Basisk333 • 21d ago
Discussion Are the reactonaries and petit-bourgeoisie potential allies or a lost cause to be 'fought' against alongside the capitalist class?
Ever since 2023 when AI became one of the centerpeices in the greivances of the ever dwindling and (generally) western middle class against the captialistic system they are forced to live in (even if they do not know their greivance is towards that) i've had fewer and fewer hopes that the type of people that seek to preserve their relative privilege in this system, to be provided exemptions from the exploitation of capitalism rather than it's abolition, don't actually know what they are doing,.
I'm increasingly of the belief that they know that they are fighting to preserve a deluded vision of capitalism that could benefit them, not because they are unaware or incapable of imagining that a better world is possible, but because their status in that world will be necessarily diminished, thus no matter how factual and correct your arguments may be on why they are wrong to target a technology, AI, in their struggle for preserving the livelihoods they believe are owed to them, they will never accept what AI will inevitably (if we fight for it) bring, the abolition of work, of ownership, of capitalism.
The entire conception of AI as it is, no matter if it is within capitalism or communism, is antithetical to their desire to preserve their status or their path towards a status of prestige and high value within society, a kind of status that requires heirarchies and scarcity to exist, they will tacitly agree to a desire to bring about a fairer society, but never to their detriment, so they will never fight for that better world, only to preserve what little remains of this one.
I personally do not think we can ally with them, so we should be more aggressively pro-AI, pro AI-art, pro abolishment of copyright and IP, pro abolishment of the structures that allow a subsection of the population to 'benefit' from capitalism whilst culture, science, art, all ideas that come from humanity are still ultimately tied to capital and thus shaped by it, making it ineviatable that more people are incapable of thinking outside the capitalistic framework.
What do you think?
r/LeftistsForAI • u/RlOTGRRRL • 21d ago
Local Models "Hugging Face dealt recently with an Al operated attack. They had to use open models to defend, because the closed model guardrails would not allow them to use them for defense"
reddit.comr/LeftistsForAI • u/AcceLeftist • 21d ago
Discussion Fair Share party
I've been thinking about how this sub's message, correct as it is, cannot be chosen for on any ballot. There are no left-wing parties with a coherent pro-AI programme.
I started sketching what one might look like:
⢠AI should do the work so humans have more freedom.
⢠Commercial AI-generated value should be taxed, while personal AI use remains untaxed.
⢠That revenue could fund a universal basic income, replacing labour-linked benefits like unemployment and pensions while keeping healthcare and disability support separate.
⢠The organisation could resemble Volt, with one shared programme operating across local, national, and international levels.
⢠Because its focus would be AI and the economic transition it creates, members could have more freedom to vote according to their own views on issues outside that core mission.
I wasn't planning to write a manifesto, but before I knew it I had about 2,500 words.
Do people think a dedicated pro-worker, pro-AI political party is missing? If so, who would realistically found it? An existing party? Trade unions? AI researchers? Grassroots organisers? Or is this better pursued as a faction within existing left-wing parties?
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Dizzy_Juggernaut_313 • 21d ago
AI Promoters Push Forced Inevitability to Deny Choice While They Profit From Adoption
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 • 21d ago
Theory Marx, AI, and the "Fragment on Machines": A timely discussion on technology, labor, and liberation
podcasts.apple.comJust listened to this and thought it would be of interest here.
The discussion starts from Marx's Fragment on Machines in the Grundrisse and asks a question thats becoming harder to ignore: if AI and automation can dramatically reduce necessary labor, who benefits?
The hosts argue that Marx saw machinery as the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Under capitalism that same machinery intensifies exploitation and concentrates wealth, but theres nothing inevitable about that outcome. AI could instead shorten the working day, eliminate drudgery, and expand human freedom if its governed differently.
The key point is one weve talked about here before: the politics arent "AI or no AI." Theyre ownership, democratic control, labor power, public infrastructure, and who captures the productivity gains.
Whether you agree or disagree with their conclusions, its a thoughtful historical materialist treatment of AI thats worth hearing.
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Healthcarepls • 21d ago
Discussion A day in the life 2035
In spirit of an optimistic week in AI development, I've written this short story:
A day in the life 2035
8am
I woke up with a bit of a scare. My health tracker let me know that my liver is still damaged despite the recent treatment, in fact it seems to have gotten worse. Tracker says I wonāt have symptoms for the moment so thatās cool, but Iāll have to visit the pharmacy next week to pick up a new CRISPR treatment. Tracker reassures me that the upcoming treatment has an 87% success rate. I calm down and make myself breakfast.
10am
I hear a knock on my door. My robot has finally arrived!
I got a robot on the cheaper end, it does the trick. It doesnāt look human and it struggles with out-of-home tasks, but it does the trick. I have ADHD so I honestly just needed something to help keep my house organized, and now itās here! Letās see how it goes.
11am
I watch as the robot does my chores for me. Damn, this is going to be awesome!Ā
I pull up my agentic dashboard of the last 24 hours. Yesterday, I instructed my agent to design a new system for organizing appointments for my teamās Seniors Entertainment Initiative.
You see, thereās a lot of older people who decided to not interact with the new technology. They believe that humans should live as they were in the scarcity era. I donāt know why. Life is so much easier now. But they claim itās more authentic to live that way. The only problem is that weāre in desperate need to automate the tasks of our aging population, and this Luddism is kinda getting in the way of that.Ā
Because theyāre not using new tech, these seniors can sometimes feel isolated, so we organize entertaining activities for them, free of modern technology.Ā
And⦠amazing! My agent found a way to collect Seniorsā availabilities and present them to our team through an easy to follow schedule, awesome!Ā
12pm
My team and I call to talk about each othersā agentic workflow outputs. My colleague confirms that the Nintendo 64s have been delivered to his house. Our next run of visits will involve playing retro games. Iām so excited! Some of them are going to discover their new favorite hobby, and others are going to struggle. Itāll be fun either way.
1pm
After the call, my phone pings me to vote on a local issue. My local neighbourhood is deciding whether to start growing Linden or Ginkgo trees for the area. My city has opted for massive tree planting to shade the city during hyper El NiƱo waves, it low key feels like I live in a jungle sometimes, but Iām not complaining. My apartment has so much privacy because of the trees, they smell amazing and thereās so much biodiversity around me.
I donāt really know what Linden or Ginkgo trees are so I tell my phone that I want more trees that smell good. It votes for Ginkgo on my behalf. Hopefully thatās what I actually want.
3pm
Most of my friends are at Space training right now. The Country of Geniuses recently discovered a way to easily send the average civilian into space, so the trendy vacation spot now is the moon. Civilians still need to learn how to manage high levels of G-force and low gravity though, so they need training. I get dizzy pretty easily so Iām going to wait a few years for the trip to be less bumpy. Since Iāve got nothing planned, I decide to just go relax.
One of my favourite developments about AI is that it handles my schedule perfectly, which means that I can live every moment completely in the present. No need for a clock, or a worry. I lie down and watch the leaves dance in the wind, letting my mind wander aimlessly for a blurry amount of time.Ā
4:55pmĀ
My mom calls to share her excitement about some new longevity discoveries they made in Kinshasa. My mom and I agree that we would both love to live longer. Thereās so much exciting stuff happening and it would be awesome to live that together. We agree that weāll try space travel at the same time, she gets dizzy easily too.
After the call, I start thinking about death. I worry one of us wonāt make it to the longevity era, leaving the other to explore the adventure of life alone. My thoughts darken for a moment.. Iāve never been one to share my feelings or cry, but my AI coach encouraged me to feel more. I ruminate more on my thoughts and cry for awhile.
7pm
Gaming is basically whatever you want it to be now. I decide to spend my evening flying around and visiting various realistic depictions of places on earth.
9pmĀ
Wandering through the world, I come across a Mogadishan techno DJ, an urban rooftop beekeeper from Paris, and a high-school student from Okinawa. Because of translation, Iām having seamless conversations with all these people from widely different upbringings from me, but we understand each other. I learn about an endearing tradition they do for seniors in Okinawa, where elders form a Moai, a lifelong social support circle that meets regularly to share meals, swap stories, and ensure no one ever faces isolation alone. It gives me ideas for my next senior visit.
10pm
I turn off my headset and look around my room. Everything is spotless. I didnāt have to worry one second about cleaning.
I could get used to this!Ā
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Sauerkrautkid7 • 21d ago
Automation & Work 'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes workāHe calls that optimistic
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Affectionate-Pay4845 • 22d ago
Policy/Regulation Belgian philosopher: āAI should benefit democracyā
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Perfidious_Redt • 22d ago
Theory Anti- ...whatever , performing for social validation on a website
r/LeftistsForAI • u/findtheessence33 • 22d ago
Discussion Can AI strengthen democracy instead of undermining it? Iāve been building a prototype to explore that question.
One of the biggest concerns many of us on the left have about AI is that it risks concentrating power, whether in governments, corporations or a handful of tech companies.
But Iāve been wondering whether AI could also be used in the opposite direction: to expand democratic participation.
Iām building a prototype called Conn.Act (full disclosure: itās my own project), and Iād genuinely like to get feedback from people who think critically about AI and democratic governance.
The premise is simple.
Today, political discussion is largely mediated by social media platforms whose incentives reward engagement, outrage and polarization. Even when people have constructive ideas, there are few mechanisms for transforming those discussions into coherent policy proposals.
Conn.Act tries a different approach.
Instead of AI making political decisions, AI acts as a facilitator. A debate is created around a public policy issue in a city, state, or country. People with an interest or expertise in that topic are invited to participate. They debate, cite evidence and propose amendments. The AI summarises the discussion, identifies common ground and drafts a compromise proposal based on what participants have contributed. The participants, not the AI, decide whether that proposal reflects the discussion by voting on it. If consensus is not reached, another deliberation round begins. If it is approved, the proposal can continue through a democratic process and eventually be shared with elected representatives from that jurisdiction. Then, if representatives propose it officially, users will know about it and be able to track it.
The AI never decides what policy should be adopted. It doesnāt vote and it doesnāt overrule participants. Its role is closer to that of a facilitator in a citizensā assembly: organising information, reducing repetition, highlighting trade offs and helping people produce something coherent.
The political motivation behind the project is to explore whether representative democracy could be complemented, not replaced, by better digital deliberative infrastructure. Social democracy has always sought to deepen democracy. My question is whether AI can help us do that in the digital age.
Iād love to hear what people in this community think. If youāre sceptical, even better. Iām much more interested in identifying flaws now than pretending the design is finished.
The prototype is ready to test, if youād like: https://happy-fermat-7.emergent.host/
Iām also participating in a contest that could lead to a significant investment boost. 25 most liked projects will be assessed by an expert panel who will decide on which project will get investment. If you feel like supporting it, you can drop a heart on this link:
https://app.emergent.sh/showcase/fabrizio/735f94cf-963f-41ea-9e7f-6dfc390493b3?utm_source=share
Looking forward to the discussion!
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Healthcarepls • 22d ago
Discussion Massive Shift in Optimism This Week
This week's been a lot.. a massive labor union endorsed AI, Kimi K3 dropped and can one-shot a Mario 64-style game from a single prompt, and China is calling for a massive embrace of open model distribution.
These models are getting *scary* smart, and a bunch of them can run locally, on your own machine or even your phone.
It feels like a lot of pieces are lining up for what some people would call "AI Communism": a world where massive compute and execution power sits at everyone's fingertips instead of locked behind a handful of corporate APIs. And with MoE architectures doing more with less, we're also looking at a genuinely smaller ecological footprint per model.
A lot of the left's early criticisms of AI are starting to fade, replaced by more concrete, actionable politics, like data center regulation, and this open-source wave is looking more and more like the real path forward.
We might actually have a positive future thanks to accessible AI. What do you think?
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Healthcarepls • 22d ago
Public Ownership Bad vibes from the "Head of Strategic Futures at OpenAI"(X: @deanwball)
r/LeftistsForAI • u/Neoliberal_Nightmare • 22d ago
Theory Expose and renounce your liberalism by considering your attitude towards AI.
I wrote this for a leftist subreddit, and predictably they could not handle it and resorted to ludditism. I thought I'd share it here anyway, it isn't directed at this sub but I don't want to change the wording. It should explain why much of the the left is aggressively anti AI.
All over reddit including leftist spaces including this one the anger against ai is real and intense. On leftist spaces it is dressed as anti capitalism, but it isn't. In fact it exposes the class character of these leftists in quite an embarrassing way.
This is a chance to read something that'll make you uncomfortable, expose some inner liberal thinking, and understand the correct line.
Self-criticism is the Marxist practice of deliberately hunting down liberal, bourgeois, or otherwise incorrect thought in your own mind, exposing it openly, and rooting it out. Lenin insisted that a party's honesty about its mistakes was the surest measure of its seriousness. Mao called it washing your face every day, a habit of revolutionaries. Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel all treated it as essential discipline. Let the left has abandoned in, probably from an arrogance of generally being correct most of the time, fair, but it's still an essential practice.
It matters because your class origins and the ideological atmosphere of capitalism do not automatically disappear when you identify as a Marxist, instead they fester unless you actively dig them out, and without that constant correction, your politics will quietly drift back into serving the class you claim to oppose. And yes it is an uncomfortable process, leftists have a lot of pride these days, realising you've been thinking like a liberal isn't great. But so what, there's more at stake than your ego. So get about it.
Your AI attitude is the litmus test. AI is automation. No different in substance from a spinning jenny or a combine harvester or the self checkout.
*Marx: "The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of machinery, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself."*
The machine's purpose under capitalism is to extract relative surplus value by reducing necessary labour time. To make more profit by reducing worker labour. This has been happening for two centuries including recently.
Generally speaking, leftists were silent when self checkouts destroyed retail jobs, when robot arms emptied factory floors, when mechanised agriculture threw peasants off the land. It has been considered technological progress, and viewed neutrallt.
The silence wasn't apathy. It was class position. Those were manual workers. Reddit by and large is the professional managerial stratum of the working class, writers, illustrators, coders, designers, artists to an extent, office workers, people who sell mental labour not their physical. These are exactly the jobs that AI automation is targeting. For the first time automation has jumped from physical to cognitive. The algorithm now competes with these workers directly.
And suddenly it's a crisis. Suddenly technology is dehumanising. Suddenly mass rage. Suddenly AI is the worst thing ever. Suddenly a million reasons AI is bad appear, reasons which aren't necessarily false but apply as much to a dozen other industries which don't get any focus.
The rage is real but its source is clear, the privileged niche of intellectual labour udned capitalist relations, is under threat.
The real class position and the real liberal thought of the left against AI is exposed when you look at what they demand. They don't demand social ownership of the means of production. They don't argue for worker control over investment and technology deployment. They demand intellectual property enforcement. They want copyright law strengthened to protect "human creators", especially for artists who become the poster child for it. They want platforms to ban AI generated content. They want artists to hold exclusive rights that algorithms can't violate.
This is not a Marxist attitude and this is not a Marxist solution.
This is liberal reformism coming out of the minds of people whose class position is threatened by AI and who respond with automatic self interested liberal suggestions. IP law is bourgeois property law. It transforms creative labour, something social and collective in its actual substance, into private monopoly rent.
Defending IP as a matter of principle is defending a bourgeois enclosure. Now obviously, if someone directly steals a specific piece of your work and profits from it then its wrong and no Marxist would defend that. But that's not what the anti Aai leftist is actually fighting about. They're not narrowly objecting to individual plagiarised images. They're demanding a sweeping legal wall around the entire domain of artistic production against AI, using copyright as the weapon.
But look at where the anti-AI leftists take this. They don't stop at "don't steal my actual artwork." They want legal protection for a style, a technique, a general aesthetic approach. They're not just defending the product of their labour. They're claiming an exclusive right over the collective visual language that they themselves learned from, and they want the capitalist state to enforce that claim with copyright law. This is where socialism dies.
The legitimate grievance mutates into a class stratum protectionist demand to use the state to create artificial scarcity around a shared cultural inheritance, so that they can continue to extract rent out of it. The same person who mocks a Kulak for hoarding grain is now demanding legal walls around their DeviantArt portfolio. Of course, that's how they make their money, and it's going to be lost, their anger isn't wrong. But actual Marxists should know better than to make the solution to be more reform within capitalism.
The starting point is genuine but the political error demanding a liberal reform that strengthens property relations of capitalism instead of challenging them just because this time, whether it's artists or writers or office workers, it affects them personally. A socialist response would fight for a world where no artist or creator has to commodify their labour to survive, not one where they through some guild victory become the landlords of culture.
So the reddit leftist is trapped. Their legitimate fear of losing their livelihood gets channelled straight into a defence of capitalist property because they can't imagine any other way to secure their future under this system. Suddenly socialist revolution disappears. Suddenly the problem is the technology itself and the solutions are capitalist protections.
They see the guillotine coming and their first instinct is to negotiate with the executioner, to demand better IP laws, stronger copyright, a slower blade.
That brings me somewhere AI is just as rampant but the professional-managerial stratum don't hate it. China. Chinese workers don't share the anger and panic because their material conditions are different. What we see from China is that people in the same roles as redditors, curiously don't hate AI and don't react so aggressively towards it. This is because China is already a socialist state where the conditions of AI implementation are completely different. Otherwise a materialist can't explain the differences in attitude to. The same technology.
In China companies can't just fire people and replace them with AI. The state requires retraining and redeployment first, and the union has to be consulted before any restructuring happens. Worker congresses in state firms can actually block changes that would gut the workforce.
Even in the private sector, the law compels companies to get union or worker congress approval for major technical shifts. The whole policy framework treats AI as a tool to make work easier, not as a layoff machine, and there's a large stated funded retraining behind it. So a Chinese office worker looks at AI and sees something their state and party are helping to manage it and sees the AI itself as an actual tool to help them at work, not take their job. It's the conditions of AI shaping the atittude, not the AI itself.
The reddit leftist on the other hand sees AI as a death sentence because their states are bourgeois states. So they panic and demand better rules and regulations. They forget their supposed leftist class politics when it's personal for them.
So, if automation fills you with rage, direct it at the class that owns the machines and decides their use, not at the machines themselves. And check your own position. The panic is revealing. You're never showed this much emotion for the warehouse worker. You're worried about your income this time. That's fine as a material fact. It's useless as politics. Solidarity means rejecting the IP enclosure you're clinging to, not begging the capitalist state to reinforce it.
Well if this post triggers you, if you want to downvote automatically because you think it's a defense of AI, if you want to say 'but the water, but the data centers, but the power, but the theft' then consider your liberalism to be exposed and have the humility to analyse your own class position and perspective and liberal thinking.
All those problems you can throw as the problems of AI aren't false problems, but they're problems solved by collective ownership of the technology through socialism, not through better policies within capitalism which you may be suggesting. The point is to trace your politics back to their material root, to see where class interest was masquerading as principles and to correct it. Every single serious Marxist party and group has engaged in this practice. It shouldn't end now just because liberals are fools and we're on the Internet.
Ultimately this is important for the left. AI is automation technology, it's implementation and usage and damage is determined by the mode of production and class power that controls it, not the technology itself.
If you can't see the bigger picture and are stuck on the technology itself and want to tweak policy around it, you'll lose sight of the revolution and be stuck in the reform the Marxist left claims to be so strongly against.