Hot Take: The problem with AI isn't actually AI

[cashew]

Ok, so I have my problems with AI, not because of major ethical concerns but because the damn thing doesn't deliver what I want. (I've once again dropped AI Dungeon because LLM cannot write a decently creative story even after I feed it explicit instructions on how the scene should go and what the characters should say, because all the AI does is reuse my own words back at me.) However, despite AI sucking and absolutely not delivering creativity (which is a personal problem I have with AI), the actual problem with AI is not with the AI technology itself.

The problem with AI is, pay attention now, CAPITALISM. So you know all that plagiarism and copyright stuff? Nobody gave a shit before CAPITALISM became the defacto economic system. I mean, remember how in pre-captialistic societies people snuck their own writings under the names of other people and were perfectly willing to not claim credit for their own labor? Stories were told, retold, remixed, rehashed, derived, and, yes, stolen, over and over and people didn't really care. Art was copied and reproduced and counterfeited as people tried to pass their own art off as someone else's.

Because, in this distant past, the economic system was not one in which an artist/writer had to consider their labor as something to be sold for money. No. They saw their labor as a creative outlet that needed to be expressed, not monetized. (And also because they had aristocratic patrons who fed and clothed them so they can focus on making art instead of learning a trade skill to make ends meet.)

It is the monetization of creative labor that causes AI to be a problem. It is the world, the economic system in which one has to sell labor to ensure survival, that turns creativity into a commodity, which causes AI automation to turn into "a problem". Just like the steam/combustion/electric engine obviated the need for carriage drivers, AI automation will take over and slowly replace a company's need to hire skilled drawers and writers of stuff to generate consumer products (be that illustration for animated movies or flavor text in a videogame).

And of course the discourse is constantly around the topic of "AI is stealing from these artists without compensation", as if the commodifying of art and artistic creativity is some kind universal constant, without anyone asking, "Hey, wait a minute. WHY IS ART COMMODITY?" Isn't art supposed to be expression of the self? (Plus, art pieces used to be collected by the aristocracy and bourgeois and had nothing to do with 99% of the population that were peasants who wouldn't have been able to enjoy the art because they were too busy tilling the fields. Just to be clear, I don't think feudalism is better.)

And the answer to why we've normalized the commodifying of art is because CAPITALISM. Because under a capitalistic society, labor must be sold to secure resources to stay alive. Because under capitalism, we live in a scarcity driven economy that incentivizes monopolizing labor to secure enough material goods to generate more stuff.

But guys. We currently live in a post-scarcity world. We make so much food that literally 60 million tons of food is thrown away every year in the US alone. Electronics are in such oversupply that planned obsolescence is a standard practice (Google it if you haven't heard of it by now). We can literally feed the entire world's population with the food we already grow without anyone having to work.

So. Why are we still selling our labor for money to exchange for food? Why do we still accept an economic system designed to stimulate production? When will we realize increased production does not guarantee distribution?

The problem with AI isn't its automation. The problem is the irrational system dictating the distribution of resources and the reliance on the selling of labor to gain a portion of the already overproduced resources to secure survival. We shouldn't be distributing material resources based on money. We can definitely just hand out food and housing for free at this point without production being impacted (because, again, automation is a thing now).

In a post-scarcity world, problem is a matter of getting stuff into the hands of people who need the stuff, not stimulating more production of stuff we already can't consume. Using money as the accounting method is outdated and unsuitable for the post-scarcity world we live in.

TL;DR - The problem isn't AI is stealing jobs. The problem is that for some reason selling labor is the economic system we're still using in a post-scarcity world when distribution is the problem we should be solving.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

What you say makes sense. But solving it would require changing from the current capitalistic model of world economics to...something else. So far there's been no signs of a new economics system coming up that shows potential to displace capitalism the way it did previous models...

[cashew]

I mean, technically Star Trek takes place in a post-scarcity economy (with the replicator), right? How does Trek-verse deal with post-scarcity economy? I say we adopt Trek economic model. 🤓

On a more realistic note: I mean, I'm not surprised that there's been a rise of socialism and leftist media in the past five years or so as more and more people start catching on that we're living in a broken economic system. UBI (Universal Basic Income), or at the very least a targeted UBI program (instead of poverty subsidy) could be a start. We have AI, bots, and drones already. Surely we can have 90% of the population slack off and still manage to produce more than enough stuff to go around.

[tanithryudo]

I don't think Star Trek actually got down to the nitty gritty of economics (just like it never got down to the nitty gritty of politics or foreign policy, etc.) Most of the time, it just reflects the era where the show was made. So like, TOS era was capitalism ho! TNG era floated toward socialism. DS9 tried to be "realistic" with varying success. Voyager was in its own bubble and had no background economy to deal with. After that I haven't kept track. =P

I mean, changing the economic model of a nation, much less globally, isn't just a matter of if the mechanical basis is available. Unless outside factors are in play, any kind of change that happens from within is pretty slow to come by...and usually not peaceful, just sayin'.

[cashew]

Viva la revolución! I mean, no, it's not always peaceful, but honestly, with Trump's recent push to invade Greenland, I question how much longer the US citizens can afford to keep trying for "peace" or "peaceful resolution". :p

[tanithryudo]

Eh, the problem is that the demographic which tends to lean towards violent resolution, and have the means for it (guns), tend to be the demographic that aligns more *with* Trump.

[cashew]

Eh... I mean there's still the Che Guevara t-shirt buying crowd... And if the Black Panthers organized in the 60s, who's to say another group won't rise up in the 2020's? 🤷‍♀️