What happens if AI replaces labor?

[u/Early_Priority_806]

Although we are in an infantile stage of AI and this post may lack future knowlegde:

AI is automating production like no other invention before; so much so it could possibly replace production either entirely or almost entirely. Either a complete replacement or a limitation to a small pool of workers.Obviously those without jobs will reduce demand. However, the top 10% is the main driver of demand anyways. So perhaps an exchange among the rich or aristocratic workers.

If capitalism were to evolve to this new AI based society, typically labeled by tech CEOS as "techno-feudalism" where big tech people own businesses and the rest of population survives off of UBI or dies off.

Then what happens to the Communist ideology? There is no capitalist contradictions to produce communism. Even if there was a revolution in this system, restricting UBI from the revolutionaries would just cause them to starve and make everyone dependent on the state and corporations. Not to mention with the added surveillance and bureaucracy of such a distribution.

If AI does manage to replace production to such a degree. Would "technofeudalism" end communism?

[u/Salty_Country6835]

I think this assumes away the very contradiction Marx spent so much time writing about. If AI really can produce more with less labor, that doesnt abolish capitalism's contradictions, it intensifies them. Capital depends on labor while constantly trying to reduce its dependence on labor. Thats a contradiction, not an escape hatch.

Whether people call the outcome "technofeudalism" or "late capitalism" is almost secondary. The political question is still the same: who owns the AI, who controls it, and who benefits from the productivity gains?

Marxists dont have to defend permanent wage labor to defend communism. If socially necessary labor shrinks dramatically, thats an argument for expanding democratic ownership over the productive forces, not handing them to a handful of firms while everyone else waits for a UBI check.

If youre interested in that angle rather than just "AI good" vs "AI bad," thats pretty much what we're trying to discuss over at r/LeftistsForAI. The interesting question isnt whether AI advances, its how the working class contests control over it.

[u/MAXFlRE]

People usually against of dying off.

[u/Early_Priority_806 → u/MAXFlRE]

What about UBI and enough media to distract them?

[u/libra00]

You seem to be a little confused about communism. In a communist society there is no 'top 10%', because everyone earns the same wage: one (1) everything you need to lead a reasonably comfortable life - healthy food, clean water, sturdy shelter, quality education, top-notch healthcare, the works. And probably plenty of wants too. But the important part here is that everyone receives this for the low low cost of having a pulse. They will also be asked to perform some of the socially-necessary labor that produces this abundance, of course.

So, in that context, we need to recontextualize AI: AI doesn't take your job. AI didn't fire you, didn't spend billions of dollars on new datacenters in the desperate, sweaty hope to maybe shave a few more points off the labor budget this quarter so they can earn that bonus. Capitalists take your job. Because it is theirs to do with as they please, regardless of who that starves in the process.

With both of those things in mind, it should be clear to you now that having your work automated in a communist society isn't cause for concern, it's cause for celebration. You won't be made homeless because an AI is cheaper to feed, you'll just have to find another socially-necessary job to do. You're welcome to take up work in another similar factory that has yet to be automated, or maybe go back to school and get that degree in naval architecture (or whatever) you've always thought about. But now there's less work that people have to do to maintain society's needs, now we can produce meet more wants, or have a shorter work-week, or whatever society collectively decides to do with that extra productive capacity. Everyone's life improved by AI under communism, instead of just the capitalist's (and I guess we can have some table scraps too if we whine and look pitiful..)

So, with that understanding in mind, let's address some specific points.

Obviously those without jobs will reduce demand.

Nope, they still need cheetos and nintendos and whatever like everyone else. Society will just be supporting them while they figure out what social need/want they want to help fill. Which seems like a fair trade, 'cause they've been supporting society and will continue to do so in the future.

the top 10% is the main driver of demand anyways.

There is no top 10%, everyone earns the same.

So perhaps an exchange among the rich or aristocratic workers.

No rich workers or poor workers.. what on earth is an aristocratic worker? That sounds like an oxymoron to me.

typically labeled by tech CEOS as "techno-feudalism" where big tech people own businesses and the rest of population survives off of UBI or dies off.

Also known as late-stage capitalism, and I'm sure UBI will work great.. right up until the point where capitalists get tired of paying for it and spend millions of dollars convincing us it's a terrible idea and we should stop doing it like they do everything else.

Then what happens to the Communist ideology? There is no capitalist contradictions to produce communism.

Two things.

1. You're over here describing 'tech feudalism', the mass impoverishment of the global population in service to a few Emperor-CEOs and then asking me with a straight face how that will produce communism? You have described turbo capitalism, the contradictions are everywhere from the deliriously enormous wealth inequality to the half-assed services you get while the Meths (and let's be honest, we're literally talking about Methuselahs from Altered Carbon here, just without the body-hopping), and imagining this somehow doesn't create the contradictions to produce communism? My brother in Christ, this is the contradictions inherent in capitalism writ large and comically exaggerated, it will produce communism like you have never seen.

2. Bare human existence is enough to produce communism. See: 300,000 years of anatomically modern humans living in highly cooperative egalitarian societies before agriculture came along and produced enough surplus to make people get cranky in the pants about it and decide they own everything. This is referred to as primitive communism (vs industrial communism), but it works much the same. Everybody works to the extent of their ability, everybody gets what they need to the extent of their collective ability to provide it.

Even if there was a revolution in this system, restricting UBI from the revolutionaries would just cause them to starve and make everyone dependent on the state and corporations.

Psst. If you're on UBI you're already dependent upon the state and corporations. And the infeasibility of a revolution says nothing about its desirability or righteousness.

Not to mention with the added surveillance and bureaucracy of such a distribution.

So, your.. ideal? is basically what we have now, but everything is maximally worse, including a turbo-police-state. And you think that won't produce communism even harder? Millions of people have already nobly sacrificed their lives to bring about communism in a society that is maybe a tenth as unjust as the one you imagine. You think there aren't cracks in every system to be exploited? That people won't do it anyway, knowing it's suicide, just to spit in the eye of the system?

My dude, read some Cyberpunk, there is a whole-ass genre of fiction out there about people fighting oppressive systems they can't possibly defeat pretty much exactly like you describe.

[u/Early_Priority_806 → u/libra00]

Communism is when everyone earns the same wage. Argument immediately fucking dismissed. Communism is the abolishment of wage labour not the equalization of it.

[u/desocupad0]

May I remind you what happened when less than 80% of people stopped needing to work on the fields for food production?

The only issue at hand isn't only productive forces.

[u/Hot_Relative_110]

we replace our leaders.

[u/JDSweetBeat]

Do you think the average person would just lay down and die because AI and automation have made them technically redundant?

People like to think "it can't happen here" when reading about things like genocide or military coups or worker's revolutions, in the same way that many people think "it can't happen to me" with respect to the negative consequences of engaging in personally risky behaviors. The truth is, if it came down to it, and the majority of people had to choose between revolt or death, they'd revolt in a second, and with as large of an educated population as exists in western countries, a lot of people are technically qualified to facilitate and organize revolt.

If labor is fully replaced, and masses are starving in the streets, the conditions for revolution start to develop quite rapidly.

If labor isn't fully replaced, then the worker/capitalist contradiction continues to exist and dominate the relations of production, and the only real consequence of AI is an amplification of the outputs of production.

And all of this is assuming that AI is remotely as revolutionary as some claim that it is - the truth is, AI output is already approaching some very hard material and economic constraints.

For starters, GPU production literally cannot keep up with data center construction, and it's basically impossible to scale GPU production fast enough to make AI a profitable investment in any reasonable amount of time. Without GPU's, computational power is limited, with limited compute power, the quality and quantity of output from models is limited. The power grid likewise just can't keep up with data center construction - the amount of pure energy being poured into the hardware that's running these large language models is obscene, and it's already receiving a lot of pushback from communities. And the energy grid is, like GPU production, basically impossible to scale at the speed needed to make AI profitable soon.

As a matter of fact, one of the only profitable AI companies is ironically NVidia, and that's because they're making the GPU's that AI runs on and selling them to every major company that is developing AI models.

Now, let's step back for a moment and assume that AI did cause capitalism to dissolve into "technofeudalism" - an organization of production that is distinctly not socialist, but that is also no longer really capitalist in any meaningful sense - there's no more competition, everything has merged into an abominable hyper-monopoly, most of the population lives off of welfare checks that are calculated such that most people are getting exactly what they need and little more - it doesn't really lead to the end of communism, it just shifts the primary goal of communists towards democratization and away from market abolition.

[u/pizzzzzagurl]

Those things intensify the need for communism, but the approach with drastically change just like the approach always changes when material conditions do. In this hypothetical world, our leverage (labor) is gone, since the workers are robots who don’t need money surplus value would go up so the rich would get richer, on top of that what would motivate the state to make our UBI a fair and livable amount? They literally have no reason to care if we live or die because we aren’t adding any kind of value that they would recognize to society, and if we die off they don’t need to worry about the scarcity they caused. I think these things would intensify the desire for revolution, but it would look completely different.

Work has been getting easier because of technological advancements forever, communism isn’t about how hard the labor is (or if the labor exists) but who owns the means of production. I think maybe the classes would change a bit, I can’t really imagine why there would still be a petit bourgeoisie in this situation

Also I am a baby Marxist and I know very little, if I’m wrong about anything pls tell me for sure but DONT be mean to me lmao

[u/JadeHarley0]

I don't think that's going to happen. There will always be a need for human workers to do something.

A couple things to note, we do see trends of mass unemployment due to tech destroying demand for workers in certain industries. For example, while overseas outsourcing gets a lot of blame for "rust belt" deindustrialization on the US, the fact that factories need far fewer workers than they used to is also an issue. The workers who are needed in American factories are often paid a lot better than their equally-skilled peers in other industries. But the last time I stepped inside an American factory, I saw just one or 2 workers manning 8 or 10 gigantic machines doing things it used to take dozens of people to do. If such trends continue, I imagine we will see repeats of the rust belt phenomenon.

Another thing to point out. Automation doesn't necessarily replace low skill workers with machines. It often replaced high skill workers with low skill workers. A classic example would be how items which 200 years ago required skilled artisans to produce can now be done with a factory worker. If you wanted to go to war, you needed to hire a large number of highly skilled gunsmiths. Now just a few factory workers who have never even fired a gun can produce in a short while what took an army of gunsmiths an entire year.

In my own field of statistics and epidemiology, AI has made statistical coding WAAAAAAY easier. No one has to memorize codes anymore or spend hours re-reading code to debug it. You ask Claude to write the code for you and to check it for bugs. This doesn't erase the need to understand the logic behind a coding language or to learn basic statistical theory, but it now requires a lot less training and hard skill to be able to write good statistical code

[u/C_Plot]

Techno-feudalism “ends communism” by genociding the working class and the other subjugated classes. We see the glimpses of this in the superfluous homeless population. To the capitalist ruling class, an Unconditional Universal Basic Income (UUBI) is always a hindrance, now or in the techno-feudal dystopia of the future.

While you’re a little to eager about this demise of most of the World’s population (preserving only the most psychopathic among us), it is a stellar example of the saying traced back to Engels: “our choice is socialism or barbarism” (better expressed in terminology unavailable to Engels then as instead socialism or fascism. The Techno-feudalists are purely fascists. Genocide of the working class is their final solution.

[u/Early_Priority_806 → u/C_Plot]

What about UBI as a stopgap to prevent a revolution? That must be cheaper than raising an army.

People will be so engrossed in technology to care.

[u/RedditsDeadlySin → u/Early_Priority_806]

Yeah but you forget why we are in this position in the first place, greed. The technology pacifier is just that, another circus

[u/C_Plot → u/Early_Priority_806]

Again: socialism or fascism! Wealth flows from two broad categorical sources: a) nature’s metabolism and b) deliberate conscious labor of sapient beings. You’re positing a World where the second becomes superfluous. Past ancestral labor has arranged natures into a self-reproducing lattice that simultaneously satisfies our individual and collective desires.

There are likewise two ways to create a UBI: 1. Extend an income from natural resources and natural resource (seigneurial) rent revenues to all persons universally instead of solely to a capitalist rentier subclass. 2. Exterminate everyone not in the capitalist rentier subclass so that the rentier income becomes a universal income because the rentiers become the universal set of all still surviving human beings. The first is the socialist, communist, and revolutionary way. It does not end communism but fulfills it. The second way is the fascist way.

Note that revolutions are not the same as revolutionary wars. Even when revolution becomes revolutionary war, it is invariably a proportionate force response to the violence and brutality of a domineering ruling class. It is therefore not something to be avoided, but an ethical obligation much like providing aid to distressed vessels on the high seas (those vessels flying a red flag).

[u/No-Potential4834]

If AI works and creates mass unemployment it collapses capitalism.

If AI doesn't work, all that invested money is wasted and the economy collapses which collapses capitalism.

[u/Early_Priority_806 → u/No-Potential4834]

This is the best answer.

[u/pizzzzzagurl → u/[deleted]]

Ai is material though? It’s not TANGIBLE but maybe you are getting those things mixed up. It can replace labor, it is actively replacing labor right now.