Artificial intelligence has not been out of the news lately, and is increasingly hard to avoid on our screens. Amazing promises are still being made about how it could increase productivity, make transformative discoveries, and decrease human drudgery. Yet it is already having a detrimental effect on working people, and on the environment, with other threats on the horizon. How far can it go in replacing human jobs? In breaking free of its instructions? Will it push climate change over the edge?
On Sunday, October 11th Marx21 is having and open Zoom meeting “Artificial Intelligence: A Marxist Analysis.” Rohit Revi, a labor organizer who has spoken and written on A.I. from a Marxist perspective, will give a twenty minute introduction, followed by friendly open discussion.
There are now widespread and influential battles against individual huge resourse-consuming data centers in communites across the US, and around the world. Mid-term races are now filled with Republicans and Democrats, who previously trumpeted the tax base of data centers, now recognizing the anti-A.I. feeling and each blaming the other. None can be trusted.
There have also been important demonstrations, backed by National Nurses United, of nurses and others against Palantir’s involvement in healthcare. This brings together issues of patient privacy and the deskilling, overwork, and replacement of nurses together with activism against Palantir’s involvement with ICE and the Israeli military.
The US is now in an A.I. arms race with China. “If we don’t win in AI, then it’s game over,” said treasury secretary Scott Bessent, later adding “There is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this,” while rejecting regulation.
There are real worries about “A.I. agents going rogue,” but much of the rhetoric of “existential threat” is often exaggerated and coming from A.I. execs eager to keep regulation out of democratic control, and hide their own over-investment based on exaggerated promises of what it could to.
The big tech companies are investing trillions of dollars in enormous data centers and related A.I. expenditures over the next five years. This has become a substantial percentage of US construction, and of stock market “value.”
At the same time, many companies the big investments they have already made are being rendered much less valuable—even worthless—by the pace of technological change, and they are now threatened with collapse.
There is now more and more understanding in the financial world that the A.I. bubble will “suffer a correction.” The danger is that, with the state of the world economy, this could spark severe and maybe even catastrophic economic crisis.
There are now apparent splits between the Trump administration and the big tech firms over the pace of development, but not its direction. There are also splits between the few established hyper-scalers who want to consolidate a monopoly, and other emerging tech firms. But none are on the side of the working-class majority.
Unions can set limits, conditions and job safeguards on adaption of artificial intelligence. There are examples of this that can be shared, built on and expanded. But this does not take the place of a larger movement for more systematic change.
This Sunday, Rohit will unpack the dangers and claims, touching on effects on the economy, employment, the environment, the use of A.I. in surveillance and military, and the role of the anti-democratic and racist elitism in the billionaire high-tech far right, all in the context of the persistent fate of technology under capitalism. These questions are all key to how we best defend our jobs, the environment, and take on anti-human capitalist priorities. You are wellcome to join what we hope will be a facinating and productive discussion.
Marx21 Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9132004856 Sunday Oct. 11, starting 10 am Pacific time, and 1pm Atlantic time
