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Could Communism work with AI?
- Thread starter MrMephistoX
- Start date
Its not about progress its about reaching the peak mate.
We reach the peak in many fields of technology where there are now diminishing returns... i mean just how much more can you innovate a smartphone? If you make it bigger it just becomes a tablet
People thought communism was the peak but sorry to say its not.
Call me arrogant (yes i am) but you seem quiet arrogant as well.
You claim there are billions of poor people that could form the proletariat class to start a revolution but i say all real world facts point to the fact they are on the march towards joining a globalized capitalism. You say the chinese factory worker doesnt care about yeezys whilst ignoring how the CCPs legitimacy is derived from Chinas economic growth and the creation of a middle class and the countless millionaires.
And it seems u are not well versed in Chinese history either cause lets not discount the unique characteristics of China is like, it experienced a centiry of humiliation and tragedies like the great leap and culutural revolution. What the chinese experiencing now is unprecedented wealth and most importantly stability and u can count on them not throwing all that away in a violent revolution for some utopian pipedream that probably wont work.
And All you have done is call postmodernism bunk and act like youre wiser and know it all under your BA in politics and bringing out your age lol but somehow you are still a communist????
Innovation does happen under the state but american 'know-how' is unrivalled in the world and very much the product of its hyper materialistic and captialistic core. What OS are u using now? Windows? Linux? Osx or Android mate?
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No, I don't see how AI solves the problems of a government trying to ensure equal outcomes for people.
How do you give the means of production to the people?
The one that immediately comes to mind is morphine. It was developed first by a German company that then exported it to the rest of the world.
The discovery of the cause of Cholera was caused by John Snow undertaking a private study. Though that one is arguable, due to him being employed in a hospital at the time.
The earliest version of what would become the gas mask was developed by a private businessman in America.
Cardiac Monitors were developed and original sold by a private doctor.
I'm sure given some time I could come up with a bigger list.
Also, what happens if there's a foreign hostile AI that's just better and it games the communist AI to start preferring capitalist outcomes?
So it's a redistribution of wealth. You can call it property if you want, but that doesn't change what it is. For a society to truly adopt Communism you would need to take from those that have and give to those that do not.
Of course. I thought previously you were asking about what happens when communism has already been achieved, not the transition.
But a good Marxist would say that the capitalist is already the one redistributing the wealth.
And lets not forget that everyone here is on a gaming forum meaning you are all probably participating in the modern religion that is hyper consumerism and buying material goods as a means of identity formation.
Our good little comrades in this threads are all just secret capitalistic agitators and lapdogs
Our good little comrades in this threads are all just secret capitalistic agitators and lapdogs
Except it does. You can't just say it doesn't belong to them. We'd have to start completely thresh with a new civilisation for this to work.
The exploitation doesnt need to happen in the First world If they explore the third world for cheap goods, commodities, services and even then we are watching people exploited in the First world today.
The system needs a third world to exist. The metropole needs a colony. To turn a country in a social democratic scandinavian country you are not solving capitalism problems, you are giving It to another country. What happened mostly in reformists countries "i Will pay good salaries for my people, but our international companies Will not pay that outside, i Will also always buy the cheapest goods from the country that pays sub-human salaries".
With reformism you are not fixing the problems, you are only giving to another person.
It's not only China government that exploit its people its ALL the World and the system.
The system needs a third world to exist. The metropole needs a colony. To turn a country in a social democratic scandinavian country you are not solving capitalism problems, you are giving It to another country. What happened mostly in reformists countries "i Will pay good salaries for my people, but our international companies Will not pay that outside, i Will also always buy the cheapest goods from the country that pays sub-human salaries".
With reformism you are not fixing the problems, you are only giving to another person.
It's not only China government that exploit its people its ALL the World and the system.
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That's fine.
Yeah but the wealth still exists. In a truly communist society, there is no wealth.
Btw I just want to say it's refreshing just to chill chat with people about the pros and cons of economic models and I'm sorry if at any point I've come across as abrasive. You all sound like cool people.
They concentrated wealth through exploitation. It was stolen. What is stolen doesn't belong to you. It belongs to someone else, and you merely have possession of it.
Yeah you're alright for a neo-liberal shill.
Jk <3
You could, but the AI would have to be really well designed with an emphasis on humanity. No killing billions of people painlessly so that the living can experience greater joy. With a strong importance to humanity (and thus an emphasis on human kinship) you could pull it off even in a scarcity environment.
Also no computer that could do this will be built for at least 40 years. Probably more like 140.
Also no computer that could do this will be built for at least 40 years. Probably more like 140.
Not abrasive at all. We get at each other's throats way more often in the Socialism OT in Hangouts.
So tell me? What did i say does not make sense because i'll love you to point it out. But can i ask you Who is the next Picasso? All im talking about is basically reaching the peak in areas of art, science and systems of governance. A very observable and logical trend. I use examples to back myself up but people like you jst throw go ad hominen in this sort of debate? Tell me what evidence supports thay China's population is ready for another revolution?
Define exploitation? Bartering for good and services isn't the same as stealing.
XD. Love you guys too.
Heh, well if the AI is based off machine learning, it will require training sets to develop the governance model. And if ya'll want a communist AI overlord, the training data will include practices from the best communist nations, i.e. famine, mass murders, etc. lol #notmyAI.
It would be much better to have a semi-capitalist society run by AI. Lots of regulation, checks and balances, proper wealth distribution within limits. You know, allowing innovation, but not massive accumulation of wealth over generations by employing smart taxation and incentives. One of the great benefits to this would be the ending of wars (if all countries operated similar AI systems). That would mean massive amounts of wealth (via cutting all defense budgets) available for social progress.
Oh, and an AI-run government would also "drain the swamp" on professional politicians, making them essentially obsolete. It would also cut most of the bureaucracy out, freeing up more wealth from taxes to go directly to people/social programs, and it would remove corruption like tax money going into pockets. It would effectively re-distribute taxes properly back into the country, again allowing more wealth back to the people.
It depends on who holds the power in the relationship. Most have no choice what wage they work for, and they certainly don't have the choice not to work. Through this, the surplus of their labor is exploited and concentrated by those who control the means.
It's like we're bartering for beaver pelts, except I've got your family held hostage at gun point. Either agree to my terms or suffer. Would you say I stole from you in that scenario?
I haven't lol. Whenever I hear the word bartering I always think of old Clint Eastwood movies where they used beaver pelts.
Oh, your situation is literally a scene from that show lol
The wages laborers receive are less than the value their labor generates for their employer.
Throwing around the phrase 'end of history,' when you obviously have no idea who Francis Fukuyama even is was the clearest indication that you might have heard some of these phrases, but have no idea what they mean. As an aside, also, I did not "throw around ad hominems" and I'm also not "debating" you. You're nonsensically rambling, not debating. And that's not an "ad hominem." I suggest you look up what those phrases actually mean before using them.
Beyond that... rambling about... the next Picasso... evidence about another Chinese revolution... reaching peaks of art, sciences, and governments... Step away from your keyboard and hit the pipe again.
No sure what that has to do with communism. Automation is already here. It doesn't have to be fully automated but if you take a job down by dozens down to a couple of people that is enough for massive unemployment when it happens in many industries.
Of course, any AI that learns society strictly from its own perspective will simply kill us all (what's it even supposed to optimize for if it doesn't have training?). They need to be commanded.
I think any properly-regulated capitalistic economy would be effectively indistinguishable from a properly run communist state, unless you think that inequality is somehow good and people should gain favor by luck.
I'm not a Communist, but I find the 'human nature is the reason Communism can't work' argument deeply suspicious, mainly because it doesn't seem like much of an argument to me.
We have to ask: where this idea comes from? Is it undeniable socio-scientific fact that we're 'greedy' as a species or are the results and experiments (perhaps unwittingly) cherry-picked, even twisted, to suit a specific hegemonic hypothesis? Are Communism's systemic flaws bore out by its failure throughout history or are there a ton of other factors that have contributed to its collapse (not least of all by that classic cliche: 'history is written by the winners')?
Like I said, I'm not a Communist, but as a conclusive point, I think 'Human Nature' is far too nebulous - far too much of a thought-terminating cliche - to ever hinge one's point on. It's exactly in these sort of vague, untested assumptions where ideology has its strongest grip.
We have to ask: where this idea comes from? Is it undeniable socio-scientific fact that we're 'greedy' as a species or are the results and experiments (perhaps unwittingly) cherry-picked, even twisted, to suit a specific hegemonic hypothesis? Are Communism's systemic flaws bore out by its failure throughout history or are there a ton of other factors that have contributed to its collapse (not least of all by that classic cliche: 'history is written by the winners')?
Like I said, I'm not a Communist, but as a conclusive point, I think 'Human Nature' is far too nebulous - far too much of a thought-terminating cliche - to ever hinge one's point on. It's exactly in these sort of vague, untested assumptions where ideology has its strongest grip.
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The problem needs to be solved well before the coming of AI. Our societies are based upon work, when automation will take a the majority of low level works away what will we do? Besides, one could argue that, maybe, if "simple" well built machines could plant, water, harvest an transport food around using solar power maybe we shouldn't pay for that food. It is really a matter of if we can change from a: take everything you can a fuck others mentality to a: take only what you really need one.
No, it's pretty new, but that poster isn't doing a good job at analyzing it. For one thing Postmodernism isn't about the end of history as in reaching a final point, but the end of capital H History by abandoning metanarratives the provide lowercase h history an endpoint.
Postmodernism isn't about the idea that we've done progressing, but being done with the unqualified idea of "progress". Put another way, it's a Humean and Nietzschean response to Hegel.
Honestly i do not understand this whole deal about private vs public when it comes to invention. So many internet hours wasted on this and it only helps to reinforcate the foolishness of those who believe that the only possible ways you could have an economy is either no goverment or "full" goverment.
It's an argument about the efficiency of markets and how they are not a good solution to most problems.
The majority of economists are aware of market failures.
It comes from the fact that maybe .2% of people that talk about Communism, and this includes those for it, have read Capital, so it's easy to throw around the phrase as a catch all insult for the parts of their understanding of Marx that sound too good to be true. It's ironic because a large part of Marx is suggesting this must happen because of Human Nature, and it's actually his strong appeal to some determinism of Human Nature that is so obviously the most problematic aspect of his general theory.
Marx's issue isn't that he ignored human nature, it's that he placed far too much stock in a specific conception of it.
Maybe im stupid but one of the problems for me with "human nature" is that people mean that "humans like to own shit" but at least in economics people do not like to own shit, people like to enjoy shit (and they do it infinitely) but since resources are scarce they have to own them. Nobody in the right mind would try to own air since is an apparent infinite resource (yeah yeah i know china and clen air).
Communists very readily believe that we are quickly approaching some critical mass of unemployment brought about by automation (capital?) and advances in AI that will bring about mass unemployment, hopefully followed up by some proletariat uprising to bring about the next phase of history or some such. Some deus ex machina that brings about the revolution. What's supposed to be different this time is that AI will allow automation like never before, automation of mental work, the last bastion where human labour is needed. But AI ain't shit.
What we have in AI now basically all boils down to throwing a lot of processing power at a lot of data to find correlations and maybe use those correlations to make some choice. We don't really have anything at all that understands what the various variables mean beyond whatever correlations they might have with other variables or any of the causation that might be going on between variables. There are plenty of clever ways to arrange this to do various tasks but I'm very skeptical it's enough to obviate the need for human intellectual labour. Even if we take a very optimistic view of how much can be achieved with this strategy collecting enough training data for all the jobs is very far from a trivial task. I suspect a bunch of nerds and managers will quickly learn that the jobs they thought they could so easily automate are a lot more involved then they thought.
An example given to me earlier this thread of jobs being automated by AI was call centres. Consider the following two statements (Winograd Schema challanges).
What has to be removed?
What has to be repaired?
These questions seem trivial to a human, but AI as they exist just don't have the knowledge or understanding to disambiguate what the pronouns are referring to. They would have to know what removed and repaired mean and understand what object it would make sense for them to apply to in the context, and not just what words or phrases correlate the most with one of the responses it's programmed to give people. Without this sort of actual understanding the AI customer services agents are little more than glorified versions of whatever those shitty menus you get when you call customer services currently are called.
The post I was originally quoting said that "The inevitability of this is not in question.", which I bolded. I think the inevitability of mass technological employment because of AI is very much in question.
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