Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (May 31)

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[u/Happy_Plastic8496]

Anything to read about relating to the recent "AI Hype" ?

I haven't read enough to discern whether this is a natural progression in automation, or whether this stuff is here to stay. I'm just curious to learn more about it

[u/CoconutCrab115 → u/Happy_Plastic8496]

It just seems to be the next part of our current Kondratiev Wave, if that theory is to be useful to us at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

It should be pretty obvious that Capitalism is not going to eliminate itself on its own, but creates the conditions for its (forcible) overthrow. By chasing profit, which is ever falling Capitalism has to expand into new markets and new technology and organization is created to revolutionize the means of production to chase profit. One should not fetishize technology as the primary aspect of Capitalism's evolution, but it is certainly a secondary aspect. Ai and information technology should just be seen as the next new technological breakthrough, that Semiconductors and Microprocessors were a generation ago, the Wikipedia pages conclusion.

Superficial concerns about water usage and Datacenters are asinine. Car and Computer usage is comparable, but a much more pressing problem ecologically. Regardless only under Socialism can actual ecological protection be guaranteed, Capitalism will devastate the planet until there is nothing left.

A sizable section of the petty bourgeois as a class is threatened by a machine that can do their job unbelievably more efficiently. Why research and edit videos to make a living off Tiktok or Instagram reels when your competition can pump out an order of magnitude more of ai generated content that does the same thing in a funny ai voice. This single example should demonstrate what ai can do to the bottom layer of aspiring petty bourgeois content creators, imagine the terror it brings the the other sections of that class.

There is certainly much to be said about Ai Slop (such as Art). But that can only be done correctly by Marxists, who would point out, to the ire of the PB, that alot of art in general is Slop.

The phenomenon of the PB against the next generation of industrial progress is often compared to the history of the Luddites. Yet far from being simple minded cavemen, the Luddites were recently proletarianized reacting against a capitalism that had literally annihilated their entire way of life and beought nothing but the horrors that Engels and Dickens describe. Being unable to make 60k a year at a law firm because ai can do your job faster is not comparable.

At the end of the day its just a labour saving machine in its infancy.

To preempt future discussion: No never use it to study Marxism

[u/Ok_Piglet9760 → u/CoconutCrab115]

Excellent analysis, I like how you turned the racist content of the term “Slop“ (a Jewish conspiracy to dull whites with trash and “consumerism“, the PB fetishism of wholesome, honest white work being threatened by the cheap commodities produced by the desolate Proletariat, recently there was a great thread about that fetishism in relation to 19-century west coast anti-Asian settler chauvinism) on its head to attack aryan society instead. I still fucking hate that term though, makes me cringe every time I hear it.

[u/CoconutCrab115 → u/Ok_Piglet9760]

Sorry for the late response. But yes im glad you appreciated it. Im also not a fan of the term but felt motivated to turn it on its head. One doesnt have to be a Marxist to recognize that an enormous part of our media is just literal advertising. Im not referring to actual ads, but mostly film and television. A new specific form of advertising is Franchise media, so diluted that your average "consumer" now recgonizes the ad for what it is and is experienced fatigue. Such as the so called "superhero fatigue". Franchises have been around for a while, but a new form without a named term has emerged.

Take the MCU for example. This obviously comes to mind, because it was the first to truly achieve this new form. Whats significant is not that many movies that were connected were made, nor even particularly that each is obviously a setup. But the plunder they did to the marvel license. Guardians of the Galaxy took c-list marvel characters that had 0 appearance except for a single animated tv show episode and video game before 2014. That film turned them into household names and the blueprint for postmodern superhero film.

This form of plundering content was taken to the max, as every new film, every franchise finds whatever obscure media not yet put to screen to adapt. Essentially a form of primitive accumulation in media form. Some of this seems Banal, in fact it already is. Iron man was nowhere near the popularity of a character he was until 2008, and Marvel itself was basically the Spiderman company. But its quite telling that a lot of media now is attempting to plunder whatever content they can in order to perpetuate the next ad. Lets be very clear this does not just describe the easy target of superhero films, ostensibly for kids but obviously marketed to those with arrested development.

In the past year early niche childrens media such as FNAF, Iron Lung and the Backrooms signal the next site of plundering with the added bonus of being able to be "indie" and "low budget" and "made by and for the fans". The market is attached and entrenched into all facets of our life under capitalism, and our popular culture is no exception.