And i don’t mean stuff like deepfakes/sora/palantir/anything like that, im talking about why the anti-genai crowd isn’t providing an alternative where you can get instant feedback when you’re journaling
And i don’t mean stuff like deepfakes/sora/palantir/anything like that, im talking about why the anti-genai crowd isn’t providing an alternative where you can get instant feedback when you’re journaling
Those people are usually Westerners that take the easy route which is to blame a tool for the issues caused by capitalism.
However, if you look beyond the small western world into countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam and others in the global South, AI, including genai, is celebrated. You can find plenty of content in Xiaohongshu with comments fascinated with the inventions of people.
One example of this is this song created by a person that used AI for the production of it:
This is another where someone produces a video regarding neoliberalism to educate:
There is even a Yotube channel called Dialectical Fire that posts incredible content using AI.
All I know is that this new form of luddism will disipate into history similarly to the past luddism of past century.
You’re aware that the luddites were correct, right? They weren’t vulgar technology haters, they had valid concerns about their pay and the quality of the products produced (actually an excellent comparison to many people who oppose LLMs), which turned out to be accurate. The idea of luddites as you use it here is explicitly liberal propaganda used to smear labor movements for expressing valid concerns, and they didn’t dissipate into history, there were and are subsequent similar labor movements.
The point is that even though the concerns the luddites had were correct, their methods were not. Hence why they failed. Now, people are trying to do the same things that we know don’t work.
Can you elaborate dear? why do you say their methods were not?
Luddites attacked machinery, blaming it on their declining quality of life. The correct approach is to attack the capital relations directly, ie to attack the capitalists themselves, and take hold of the productive forces built up by capitalism already, directing it for the good of all rather than the profits of the few.
I mean, the combative communist cells here have blown weapon industry plants. It’s true they “failed” but it gave people hope
That’s different entirely though, sabotaging the war machine is entirely different from attacking factories for consumer commodities.
Of course. I’m just saying sabotaging the tool of production cant be “that” useless, would it.
Kinda? Depends on the aim, sabotaging the war machine stops people from dying from it. Sabotaging factories just hurts productive capacity, better to smash the state and replace it with a socialist one.
I think Yogthos and Cowbee said it well, but I just wanted to add some of Marx’s thoughts from vol 1, chapter 15 in regards to luddites if you haven’t read it, forgive me if you already have.
spoiler
About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright’s scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used.
Sadly, a lot of them still can’t, as evidenced even in this thread.
I hope AI discussion in the future start to blossom further into something better, because as it stands, it just feels rather disheartening when things get like bad? I’m not sure what it is with AI that leads to like, other comrades willing to call other comrades “dumb” elsewhere or other dejecting statements. It just gets very demoralizing.
I think it will pass in few years max. AI bubble will either break or be deflated, Chinese will improve their tech even more, online shitstorm artisans will either find new niche or get a job, AI creations will get less recognizable and so on.
It will improve but I feel that some comrades are disconnected from stories where AI is having a positive impact in people’s life. Stories that will make them question: “Why are there good stories in China but not in the West? What is missing for the West to have similar stories?”.
I try to post a lot of AI news in c/Technology but it clearly is not working. Sorry for the ping but @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml by pure coincidence do you have any ideas on how to improve visibility regarding AI?
I like the articles you and yog post currently. I browse Local, not Subscribed, and they often appear on my timeline. With Lemmygrad growing and more posts being made per day it’s natural that not everything will get seen equally.
Maybe people might be interested in more practical uses of AI, I know at least I am. A lot of stuff we already use is neural networks (what I mean by AI personally) like image upscalers, automated image coloring, speech-to-text (like Siri, but not huawei’s voice assistant and it shows and they should really do something about this because it sucks!), moderation tools so that humans don’t have to look at CSAM (very important), translation work is also getting very good with neural networks for all sorts of usecases but you don’t have to rely on google translate anymore when that tool had a 60% accuracy at best.
I’m just spitballing but I was just seeing a new tool that automates retopology for 3D artists, which is when you simplify a 3D model you sculpted to drastically lower its polygon count and make it easier to animate. And I was thinking there’s a lot of places in my own formal work where I could free up effort if I could have similar tools, like photoshop has genAI (if you use cloud which uh, let’s just say not everyone lets Adobe through their firewall…) but some filters and effects such as selecting a subject still rely on old algorithms and don’t work very well. Selecting hair especially has been refined over the years but it’s still a mess to perfectly isolate a subject, it takes a lot of time and the results vary. Being able to click a button and have a perfect selection would be dope, and I’m sure neural networks can take care of this.
edit - I also have some ideas for posts about AI, hopefully people won’t think I’m trying to troll by posting them (if I do end up making them)
I appreciate the view and the tactical point, there is of course truth in there. Now there’s the matter of ability as well. Imagine being a resistant during fascist takeover. Every bit would count wouldn’t it? I can’t blame the ghetto kids for burning cars, if you understand me.
I’m not sure if I entirely understand? What your describing sounds like a different situation compared to talking about ai and means of production in general? I just mean it just sounds like your describing war or guerilla warfare in that context? in which, in terms of war, every bit does count like you said. and to go to ai, fascist states are using it for fascistic purposes like what the ruling class in the united states is doing with it. but I feel like that has less to do with the tool considering ai has a a wide variety of use like with what China showing what to do with it, and more to do with the people employing it for fascistic purposes? and in turn that has to do more with resisting oppressing and fascism in general and less to do with ai? I’m not sure if I properly articulated my thought.
I’ll answer more thoughoughfully later but don’t worry about it, I was just thinking aloud
Okay,
Their methods failed to effect structural change, and their whole movement was ultimately swept away.
The luddites were dead fucking wrong. Instead of seizing the means of production, they thought smashing them would solve their woes. It doesn’t matter that the luddites were skilled machine operators with a rudimentary form of class consciousness; their understanding of the issue was idealist and therefore opposed to Marxism. Luddism is liberalism.
deleted by creator
I see we’re doing the great man theory here now on lemmygrad…
If it wasn’t Marx, it would have been someone else. Marx is not a god, nor a great man, but expecting a group of proletarian industrial workers with little to no education to magically become Marxian revolutionaries before Marx is disingenuous at best.
I wasn’t saying that Marx not being born yet prevents any sort of Marxian analysis or class consciousness, but without Marx’s, or another person akin to Marx, insights, even concepts such as “seizing the means of production” become nebulous; as no one has yet analyzed why exactly that mattered, or what the next step after that would be.
Nobody is expecting anything magical here. What’s being said is that they were clearly barking up the wrong tree. Having the full depths of the analysis that Marx brought to bear was obviously not a prerequisite for realizing that it’s who owns the technology that’s the actual problem rather than the technology itself.
Adding to what other comrades eloquently explained, we should not repeat the mistakes from the past but actually learn from them.
Instead of focusing on the tool and projecting the evil from capitalists into it, we have to build a labor movement with the intention of seizing the means of production and to fight the capitalists and the imperialists. Socialism is the only way out and the proof of its success is already showing in places like China. Examples:
Working toward a world where the workers own the means of productions is a better endeavor rather than destroying the means of productions and sabotaging the tools as those luddites did.
Removed by mod
I think it’s a form of cope to think that anything China does is automatically different of better. They explicitly have a market economy, meaning that the same things can happen there that happen in the west, in the same ways. Just because the socialist government is there to catch it when it goes wrong, doesn’t mean it can’t go wrong to begin with.
Excellently put. It’s really just Capitalists doing Capitalist things, it’s just sometimes they happen to be located in China.