BBC Question Time Features AI Panel

[princedeeblebleble 3,649]

Why not hire actual humans, to dress like the characters and have them answer these questions instead of... this? 

[nATAH 57,037]

2 hours ago, gagzus said:

I’m more concerned with the fact they made Frida a white woman 

I stopped watching after the peace sign

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,175]

11 hours ago, Jill said:

There are good and bad uses of AI, just as there are good and bad movies, songs, books, etc.

I feel like Marx would see the current AI market dynamic as being pretty decidedly anti-labor and pro-consolidation of capital because, not only does it’s ease of use and ability to streamline the byproducts of human labor into readily digestible “content” or pure commodity thoroughly divorce and alienate the consumer from the means of its production/creation (thus devaluing the labor and laborer); it also exploits human labor across many disciplines without compensation and without their ability to control how it’s used, which clearly disproportionately financially benefits a small handful of AI firms by effectively consolidating and concentrating the use of the labor of hundreds of millions of people within their control to commodify as they see fit. Marx might not be wholesale against the technology itself, but I think he’d view the current ownership structure and distribution of its benefits in the current market as being massively tilted in favor of the capitalist class.

Edited May 29 by Ladle Ghoulash

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,175]

2 hours ago, princedeeblebleble said:

Why not hire actual humans, to dress like the characters and have them answer these questions instead of... this? 

Because that would require them to pay more people lol

[thisboyisamonster 1,259]

This is literally one of the worst ideas I've ever come across... Come BBC documentary better, read the room, sense the tone...

[timdrake 1,942]

so dumb. also why do AI bitches blink so much

[Jill 31,812]

6 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

I feel like Marx would see the current AI market dynamic as being pretty decidedly anti-labor and pro-consolidation of capital because, not only does it’s ease of use and ability to streamline the byproducts of human labor into readily digestible “content” or pure commodity thoroughly divorce and alienate the consumer from the means of its production/creation (thus devaluing the labor and laborer); it also exploits human labor across many disciplines without compensation and without their ability to control how it’s used, which clearly disproportionately financially benefits a small handful of AI firms by effectively consolidating and concentrating the use of the labor of hundreds of millions of people within their control to commodify as they see fit. Marx might not be wholesale against the technology itself, but I think he’d view the current ownership structure and distribution of its benefits in the current market as being massively tilted in favor of the capitalist class.

This is a very interesting topic to me so I will write a lot! I'm sorry in advance for the long comment.

Yes, you're right, but the last sentence opens the door to AI optimism. AI itself isn't the problem, technology itself isn't the problem. The Luddites were right in their assessment but their strategy was flawed, because they focused too much on technology itself instead of the people who controlled it, and they failed because no single person or group can stop the advancement of technology. And under capitalism, AI is a step toward eventual centralization, which is exactly what Marx also said: Capitalism itself breeds the conditions for its own demise. Without modern AI, the thought of an economy distributing goods centrally seemed far-fetched, especially because of the problems that the USSR had regarding it.

The current Chinese system emerged from the need to find or expriment with a "preliminary phase" to centralization, that took the shape of a "strategic retreat" (much like Lenin's NEP) while awaiting (and creating the conditions for) the development of productive forces that could generate the conditions for a centralized economy that is both modern and agile. The principle of this is inaugurated by AI, the most capable pattern machine humanity has ever created. Now, it's not so far-fetched to think that, within 20 or 30 years, the economy could distribute goods and services in accordance with Marxist-Leninist principles, only adapting everything to a modern, ultra-technological context. Marx would have been fascinated by this indeed!!

In the same way, Lenin, for instance, was (rightly) fascinated by the efficiency breakthroughs of Taylorism, referring to them as "improvements" (1) even though under capitalism they meant greater alienation for the workers. But Lenin was fascinated because they represented something humanity was capable of, something that was not only natural & a fruit of technological progress, and therefore unstoppable, but that would be even more capable under a system other than capitalism.

For example, Lenin said: "What an enormous gain in labour productivity!... But the worker’s pay is not increased fourfold, but only half as much again, at the very most, and only for a short period at that" (1)

He also identified with great insight that such a system still wasted resources because it was trapped within capitalism. He stated:

"What about the distribution of labour in society as a whole? What a vast amount of labour is wasted at present owing to the disorganised and chaotic character of capitalist production as a whole! How much time is wasted as the raw materials pass to the factory through the hands of hundreds of buyers and middlemen, while the requirements of the market are unknown! Not only time, but the actual products are wasted and damaged. And what about the waste of time and labour in delivering the finished goods to the consumers through a host of small middlemen who, too, cannot know the requirements of their customers and perform not only a host of superfluous movements, but also make a host of superfluous purchases, journeys, and so on and so forth!" (1)

But this was not a critique of Taylorism itself, but of Taylorism under capitalism, and the way it represented capitalist efficiency, which (due to the capital-labor contradiction) always benefited the owners of the means of production. That's why, in the very same text, Lenin predicted exactly what I just mentioned:

"The Taylor system—without its initiators knowing or wishing it—is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalising all social labour. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, telephone—all provide thousands of opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organised workers and make them four times better off than they are today" (1)

It truly is v interesting! That is to say, Taylorism itself is not the problem, but rather the social context in which it is born and the relations of production it serves. The same thing happens with AI, this is why I believe that "fighting against AI" is a futile endeavor, because it's like fighting against railroads, computers, emails, and so on. It's like saying: "No! We Australopithecus must not use tools! We must train our physical strength just as our ancestors did!"

This is something that often happens with every new technological advance, and we are seeing the pattern repeat with AI. The more revolutionary the technology, the more of these types of comments appear (which are somewhat "nostalgic", and even somewhat martyr like, because they link manual labor and artisanal production with what is good, ideal, and desirable). This happens despite the fact that before the rise of the new technology, many would have approved of using tools that, in retrospect, served as the predecessors to the new technology in question.

The Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky adopted this position regarding color cinema, for example, calling it a "commercial gimmick": "When we watch something going on we don't notice colour. A black-and-white film immediately creates the impression that your attention is concentrated on what is most important. On the screen colour imposes itself on you, whereas in real life that only happens at odd moments, so it's not right for the audience to be constantly aware of colour", he said (2).

Similar arguments were made for the internet and for other technological breakthroughs. But as I said, this comes from people who support more rudimentary tools that nevertheless still serve as predecessors to the new technology. In the field of art, for example, many were against the transition to digital and mediums and the computer, but today the consensus is the opposite: that an artist working with a computer is still an artist, and that the computer is a mere tool. Yet the computer is an essential building block of AI.

In the same way, "algorithmic art" challenged the norms of the art-artist relationship before the rise of AI, but today it is nevertheless considered art by many, whereas AI is not. This is because, among other things, it is the human the one who chooses and designs the algorithm itself, & because these are advancements that many people interpret as relative, even if they don't realize it: when something more robotized than AI emerges, they will look back at AI and consider it human & nostalgic by contrast, a mere tool, which is what it currently ALSO is.

I'm writing this last part about AI and art because a specific part of your comment caught my attention. You said: "it also exploits human labor across many disciplines without compensation and without their ability to control how it’s used, which clearly disproportionately financially benefits a small handful of AI firms by effectively consolidating and concentrating the use of the labor of hundreds of millions of people within their control to commodify as they see fit". Let's discuss that very briefly!

I believe this to be a very petty bourgeois perspective, the equivalent of defending "mom&pops" or "small bookstores" as a romantic/idealized activism against "big companies". Which doesn't mean I'm judging you (I also find myself having these perspectives), but it just goes to show how deeply embedded petty bourgeois discourse is within the bigger anti-AI discourse and society in general. Defending a mom&pop won't make Walmart go away! It won't damage Amazon if you use a small bookstore instead! On the contrary, it reasserts capitalism, it prevents the full proletarianization that's necessary for overcoming capitalism, because it's a defense of the petty bourgeoisie.

That's why Marxists, somewhat ironically for the uninitiated, always side on the side of big companies like Amazon instead of small, local shops. Only in a big company can you create and fight for an all-econmpassing, very powerful union! Only through the logistics of a big company can you learn how to advance humanity and how to eventually take over the same process under socialism! People want to see their lives getting better and more accesible, not worse. There's a reason people prefer Amazon's 1-hour delivery instead of walking to a local shop that may or may not have the product you're seeking, which charges you way more for it, and which doesn't have any sort of upside whatsoever apart from keeping a small family or small group of people from proletarianizing, and therefore keeping them from supporting the process of capitalism centralization, which inevitable brings forward socialism.

I believe that in the case of anti-AI discourse, the pro-"manual laborer" artist discourse is a petty bourgeois discourse that, willingly or not, reasserts the unwillingness of many independent artists to go through this proletarianization process, and which therefore makes them unable to build class consciousness and solidarity in the proletariat. There's a very interesting essay on this subject (3) that goes much more in-depth, and whose general review would make this comment much longer, but the general gist is what I just mentioned. And an important part is this: the fact that AI is part of a PIPELINE (not just as a work of art in itself, for example, but as part of a process) and therefore the arguments defending "the intrinsic soul of the artist, no matter how bad they may be" don't hold up.

Returning to your comment however the problem there is not centralization (we should advocate for it, as I already said!) but commodification. But commodification is not confronted in a Luddite manner by defending against AI. Rather, it is confronted by organizing against the concentration of wealth, organizing unions, organizing protests, things like that. Not against AI, but against the bourgeoisie and their lackeys.

AI art is a form of forced proletarianization, I believe (similar to what took place in the Industrial Revolution, when many from the countryside were forcibly proletarianized by machines, forcing them to work and consolidate factories in the cities and abandon manual, artisanal methods; many of them, many intellectuals too, were against this on eerily similar grounds as many people today are anti-AI!). Through this proletarianization, independent artists will necessarily be able to build class solidarity with the proletariat, which is a good thing.

Furthermore, AI as a technology inherently DETACHES art from its own commodification, ironically creating a process that contradicts what you said regarding commodification: thanks to the "democratization" process of AI art, for example, human expression is no longer accessible only to those who trained, but to everyone. AI then becomes a tool for expression, because when you open ChatGPT, an image doesn't automatically appear, nor does a prompt. One visualizes something and transfers it to the machine. It's something deeply human, which nevertheless (like any medium) can also create slop, and if you see AI as merely a money-making machine, you'll inevitable produce AI slop, as is the case of painters, and filmmakers, etc.

When I want to learn how to draw, the advancement of AI confirms for me that my desire lies in the technique, not in making a commercial profit from it, because if that were my purpose, it would be more convenient for me to just learn AI. The same goes for music, the same for cinema, etc. etc. (So if I want to learn how to make a wooden chair, should I just give up because a big factory makes them with half the materials, halft the cost, and half the time? Of course not! There's an element to it that trascends profit). And in the event that I want to learn AI, I will also use it as a tool, like a paintbrush, like a part of the Fordist assembly line. The assembly line doesn't produce the Model T, the workers do! The workers are the ones who conceive and manufacture both the assembly line and the Model T itself. The exact same thing happens with AI.

Sorry for the long comment. This is more or less my perspective on AI.

(1) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/13.htm
(2) https://www.nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Color.html
(3) https://redsails.org/artisanal-intelligence/

Edited May 29 by Jill

[Rahrahbitchson 23,268]

I simply can't read the acronym BBC without thinking about it.

[LateToCult 41,861]

I fvcking lost it when Frida showed up 

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,175]

6 hours ago, Jill said:

This is a very interesting topic to me so I will write a lot! I'm sorry in advance for the long comment.

Yes, you're right, but the last sentence opens the door to AI optimism. AI itself isn't the problem, technology itself isn't the problem. The Luddites were right in their assessment but their strategy was flawed, because they focused too much on technology itself instead of the people who controlled it, and they failed because no single person or group can stop the advancement of technology. And under capitalism, AI is a step toward eventual centralization, which is exactly what Marx also said: Capitalism itself breeds the conditions for its own demise. Without modern AI, the thought of an economy distributing goods centrally seemed far-fetched, especially because of the problems that the USSR had regarding it.

The current Chinese system emerged from the need to find or expriment with a "preliminary phase" to centralization, that took the shape of a "strategic retreat" (much like Lenin's NEP) while awaiting (and creating the conditions for) the development of productive forces that could generate the conditions for a centralized economy that is both modern and agile. The principle of this is inaugurated by AI, the most capable pattern machine humanity has ever created. Now, it's not so far-fetched to think that, within 20 or 30 years, the economy could distribute goods and services in accordance with Marxist-Leninist principles, only adapting everything to a modern, ultra-technological context. Marx would have been fascinated by this indeed!!

In the same way, Lenin, for instance, was (rightly) fascinated by the efficiency breakthroughs of Taylorism, referring to them as "improvements" (1) even though under capitalism they meant greater alienation for the workers. But Lenin was fascinated because they represented something humanity was capable of, something that was not only natural & a fruit of technological progress, and therefore unstoppable, but that would be even more capable under a system other than capitalism.

For example, Lenin said: "What an enormous gain in labour productivity!... But the worker’s pay is not increased fourfold, but only half as much again, at the very most, and only for a short period at that" (1)

He also identified with great insight that such a system still wasted resources because it was trapped within capitalism. He stated:

"What about the distribution of labour in society as a whole? What a vast amount of labour is wasted at present owing to the disorganised and chaotic character of capitalist production as a whole! How much time is wasted as the raw materials pass to the factory through the hands of hundreds of buyers and middlemen, while the requirements of the market are unknown! Not only time, but the actual products are wasted and damaged. And what about the waste of time and labour in delivering the finished goods to the consumers through a host of small middlemen who, too, cannot know the requirements of their customers and perform not only a host of superfluous movements, but also make a host of superfluous purchases, journeys, and so on and so forth!" (1)

But this was not a critique of Taylorism itself, but of Taylorism under capitalism, and the way it represented capitalist efficiency, which (due to the capital-labor contradiction) always benefited the owners of the means of production. That's why, in the very same text, Lenin predicted exactly what I just mentioned:

"The Taylor system—without its initiators knowing or wishing it—is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalising all social labour. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, telephone—all provide thousands of opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organised workers and make them four times better off than they are today" (1)

It truly is v interesting! That is to say, Taylorism itself is not the problem, but rather the social context in which it is born and the relations of production it serves. The same thing happens with AI, this is why I believe that "fighting against AI" is a futile endeavor, because it's like fighting against railroads, computers, emails, and so on. It's like saying: "No! We Australopithecus must not use tools! We must train our physical strength just as our ancestors did!"

This is something that often happens with every new technological advance, and we are seeing the pattern repeat with AI. The more revolutionary the technology, the more of these types of comments appear (which are somewhat "nostalgic", and even somewhat martyr like, because they link manual labor and artisanal production with what is good, ideal, and desirable). This happens despite the fact that before the rise of the new technology, many would have approved of using tools that, in retrospect, served as the predecessors to the new technology in question.

The Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky adopted this position regarding color cinema, for example, calling it a "commercial gimmick": "When we watch something going on we don't notice colour. A black-and-white film immediately creates the impression that your attention is concentrated on what is most important. On the screen colour imposes itself on you, whereas in real life that only happens at odd moments, so it's not right for the audience to be constantly aware of colour", he said (2).

Similar arguments were made for the internet and for other technological breakthroughs. But as I said, this comes from people who support more rudimentary tools that nevertheless still serve as predecessors to the new technology. In the field of art, for example, many were against the transition to digital and mediums and the computer, but today the consensus is the opposite: that an artist working with a computer is still an artist, and that the computer is a mere tool. Yet the computer is an essential building block of AI.

In the same way, "algorithmic art" challenged the norms of the art-artist relationship before the rise of AI, but today it is nevertheless considered art by many, whereas AI is not. This is because, among other things, it is the human the one who chooses and designs the algorithm itself, & because these are advancements that many people interpret as relative, even if they don't realize it: when something more robotized than AI emerges, they will look back at AI and consider it human & nostalgic by contrast, a mere tool, which is what it currently ALSO is.

I'm writing this last part about AI and art because a specific part of your comment caught my attention. You said: "it also exploits human labor across many disciplines without compensation and without their ability to control how it’s used, which clearly disproportionately financially benefits a small handful of AI firms by effectively consolidating and concentrating the use of the labor of hundreds of millions of people within their control to commodify as they see fit". Let's discuss that very briefly!

I believe this to be a very petty bourgeois perspective, the equivalent of defending "mom&pops" or "small bookstores" as a romantic/idealized activism against "big companies". Which doesn't mean I'm judging you (I also find myself having these perspectives), but it just goes to show how deeply embedded petty bourgeois discourse is within the bigger anti-AI discourse and society in general. Defending a mom&pop won't make Walmart go away! It won't damage Amazon if you use a small bookstore instead! On the contrary, it reasserts capitalism, it prevents the full proletarianization that's necessary for overcoming capitalism, because it's a defense of the petty bourgeoisie.

That's why Marxists, somewhat ironically for the uninitiated, always side on the side of big companies like Amazon instead of small, local shops. Only in a big company can you create and fight for an all-econmpassing, very powerful union! Only through the logistics of a big company can you learn how to advance humanity and how to eventually take over the same process under socialism! People want to see their lives getting better and more accesible, not worse. There's a reason people prefer Amazon's 1-hour delivery instead of walking to a local shop that may or may not have the product you're seeking, which charges you way more for it, and which doesn't have any sort of upside whatsoever apart from keeping a small family or small group of people from proletarianizing, and therefore keeping them from supporting the process of capitalism centralization, which inevitable brings forward socialism.

I believe that in the case of anti-AI discourse, the pro-"manual laborer" artist discourse is a petty bourgeois discourse that, willingly or not, reasserts the unwillingness of many independent artists to go through this proletarianization process, and which therefore makes them unable to build class consciousness and solidarity in the proletariat. There's a very interesting essay on this subject (3) that goes much more in-depth, and whose general review would make this comment much longer, but the general gist is what I just mentioned. And an important part is this: the fact that AI is part of a PIPELINE (not just as a work of art in itself, for example, but as part of a process) and therefore the arguments defending "the intrinsic soul of the artist, no matter how bad they may be" don't hold up.

Returning to your comment however the problem there is not centralization (we should advocate for it, as I already said!) but commodification. But commodification is not confronted in a Luddite manner by defending against AI. Rather, it is confronted by organizing against the concentration of wealth, organizing unions, organizing protests, things like that. Not against AI, but against the bourgeoisie and their lackeys.

AI art is a form of forced proletarianization, I believe (similar to what took place in the Industrial Revolution, when many from the countryside were forcibly proletarianized by machines, forcing them to work and consolidate factories in the cities and abandon manual, artisanal methods; many of them, many intellectuals too, were against this on eerily similar grounds as many people today are anti-AI!). Through this proletarianization, independent artists will necessarily be able to build class solidarity with the proletariat, which is a good thing.

Furthermore, AI as a technology inherently DETACHES art from its own commodification, ironically creating a process that contradicts what you said regarding commodification: thanks to the "democratization" process of AI art, for example, human expression is no longer accessible only to those who trained, but to everyone. AI then becomes a tool for expression, because when you open ChatGPT, an image doesn't automatically appear, nor does a prompt. One visualizes something and transfers it to the machine. It's something deeply human, which nevertheless (like any medium) can also create slop, and if you see AI as merely a money-making machine, you'll inevitable produce AI slop, as is the case of painters, and filmmakers, etc.

When I want to learn how to draw, the advancement of AI confirms for me that my desire lies in the technique, not in making a commercial profit from it, because if that were my purpose, it would be more convenient for me to just learn AI. The same goes for music, the same for cinema, etc. etc. (So if I want to learn how to make a wooden chair, should I just give up because a big factory makes them with half the materials, halft the cost, and half the time? Of course not! There's an element to it that trascends profit). And in the event that I want to learn AI, I will also use it as a tool, like a paintbrush, like a part of the Fordist assembly line. The assembly line doesn't produce the Model T, the workers do! The workers are the ones who conceive and manufacture both the assembly line and the Model T itself. The exact same thing happens with AI.

Sorry for the long comment. This is more or less my perspective on AI.

(1) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/13.htm
(2) https://www.nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Color.html
(3) https://redsails.org/artisanal-intelligence/

There’s a lot to get to, but I’ll try to respond to the points that interest me the most.

The dialectic of capitalist centralization creating an on ramp for worker controlled means of production is one I find fascinating, but the example you cited of China strikes me as being a fairly poor one, given how exploitative much of their industrial labor market is. Beyond China, I can’t really think of a solid historical example of where capitalist consolidation and streamlining has created conditions that have resulted in workers seizing control of the machine and reorienting it towards a worker controlled economy, as opposed to concentrating power into a different managerial, bureaucratic, or political elite.

I also don’t think the petty bourgeois critique of the way AI fundamentally exploits intellectual labor is especially fair, As it feels like it’s predicated on the idea that objections to AI’s use of intellectual labor are primarily rooted in self-interest rather than genuine concerns about consent, ownership, compensation, or labor rights.

I also can’t necessarily say I agree with the utilitarian logic of “if the exploitation of the work of artists forces them into a lower socioeconomic stratum, it will necessarily radicalize them against the capitalist/ruling class.”  I’m just not convinced that artists, academics, intellectuals, legal scholars/lawyers etc. losing material agency over their work and the precedent that sets is worth the hypothetical trade off of them maybe organizing for a worker controlled economy that may or may not result from the wealth and systemic consolidation resultant of AI. The more likely outcome seems, to me, that the oligarchs and plutocrats behind the propagation of AI will continue to use it as a part of their broader and ongoing effort to consolidate power and that any reform towards more egalitarian outcomes will likely only come from stopping this process and regulating AI’s usage as opposed to hoping to organize in a way to redirect their machinery once it’s fully taken root.

The question of AI yielding the “democratization of art” is interesting, but only insofar as you view the product of AI prompts as being “art.” If AI were truly collectivized, maybe I could entertain the notion that creating a pipeline for individuals to use pre-existing works to generate an aesthetic product using a machine could have some broader value (some anecdotal examples I can think of are small businesses using AI art to generate “higher quality logos,” as it eliminates the immediate class stigma of “this business might not offer a good product because they can’t afford to commission a ‘high quality logo,’) or even just as a visualization tool for aspiring artists to experience the satisfaction of rendering their idea in a demonstrable form.
 

However, not only is that not the climate we live in (AI art today is generated from a cynical scrape of art posted online by human artists largely for the profit of these firms), but I also question the actual net value of the version of “democratization of art” that AI offers. Art inhabits this strange space of being both commodity and also something that feels often spiritual for its creators and consumers; it is not fungible in the same way that, say, a glass of milk is fungible: art bears something that is often qualitative and distinct as a product of the effort of striving toward its creation as a form of expression, not merely as the means to the end of creating a specific aesthetic product.

As a singer, I am not impressed by the sound of a voice merely for what it is as an aesthetic phenomena, but as a consequence of the craft required for a person to produce that sound. That, to me, bares categorical distinction from forms of work that can be reduced to mechanized processes through capitalist centralization and automated industrialization and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I’d say when people look to art, much in the way that people look to religion, people are looking for a reflection of something that feels true to them about their lived experience and their own desire to express it that can’t be fully captured by the automation or mechanization of that process as a form of industrial labor.
 

To get away from the navel gaze-y associations people usually make for people arguing for the value of art as craft, I think part of the joy people get out of art is not dissimilar to the joy they get out of watching Olympic athletes: the awe of seeing the synthesis between the work and dedication required to perform the skill and the ability to perform the skill effortlessly; no one would want to watch an AI generated Olympic ski match because the spectacle is the aliveness of it, the stakes of a person doing something difficult in real time and the possibility of them failing (and the excitement when they succeed). In that sense, I think AI only democratizes art as aesthetic product, not art as human process, which has certain social/economic value, but I think degrades the more spiritual and human dimension of the experience of art more broadly.

Edited May 30 by Ladle Ghoulash

[onTheBrink 1,332]

I pay £36 a month in TV licensing for them to use the money on this 

[gagzus 23,149]

11 hours ago, princedeeblebleble said:

Why not hire actual humans, to dress like the characters and have them answer these questions instead of... this? 

The worst part is they ARENT on the panel they made this just to prompt the debate panel about AI.

So they used AI to make 4 historical figures appear for no reason other than to pull audiences in. The actual panel on the night was of (predominantly) pro-AI people answering questions that were (predominantly) anti-AI and them justifying its use.

They even had the audacity to seat a man who lost his job because of AI, next to a company owner who admitted to firing people and using AI to save money. And brought it up.

Question Time isn’t and has never been impartial, they traditionally lean more towards the views of whatever party is running the country at the time, because they (the BBC) are  funded by the government and tax payers. 

[Jill 31,812]

On 5/29/2026 at 4:54 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

The dialectic of capitalist centralization creating an on ramp for worker controlled means of production is one I find fascinating, but the example you cited of China strikes me as being a fairly poor one, given how exploitative much of their industrial labor market is. Beyond China, I can’t really think of a solid historical example of where capitalist consolidation and streamlining has created conditions that have resulted in workers seizing control of the machine and reorienting it towards a worker controlled economy, as opposed to concentrating power into a different managerial, bureaucratic, or political elite.

I wouldn't view capitalist centralization as a "ramp" toward worker control, but rather as an outcome arising from the very foundation and structure of capitalism itself, which is more or less inevitable eventually, depending on certain factors. So it t wouldn't be a ramp (which would imply a strategy) but rather a structural reality. Within capitalism, there is a big contradiction between the anarchy of the market and competition, and the centralism found within individual firms. This contradiction is eventually resolved through the centralization of the economy, but this is a process, and arguably we don't yet have examples of cases where it has been fully completed in that sense (ie socialism though centralization under capitalism).

Why is this? Because the revolutions that occurred throughout history took place at moments when capitalism was not fully developed. Often (as in the cases of Russia or Korea), it barely existed in its earliest stages of development when their respective revolutions took place. When talking about "socialism through capitalist centralization", we're talking about a revolution that necessarily arises from the maturity of economic conditions and technological advancement. This hasn't happened yet (which doesn't mean no revolutions have happened, as I said).

The 20th-century revolutions responded to different factors, and they had the peculiarity of leading processes where what wouldve been capitalism without the revolution was, instead, carried out and commanded by the Communist Party. So the technological advancements that would've otherwise taken place (or not) under a capitalist system were carried out (and often accelerated) under the various Five-Year Plans and centralized planning. This is an explicit vision held by many communist leaders, and one that also appears now in China in an equally explicit manner: the advancement and development of the productive forces.

Deng Xiaoping, who was the architect of the Reform and Opening Up period in China, said this: "Revolution means carrying out class struggle, but it does not merely mean that. The development of the productive forces is also a kind of revolution...It is the most fundamental revolution from the viewpoint of historical development ....whether the socialist economic policies we are pursuing are correct or not depends, in the final analysis, on whether the productive forces develop and people’s incomes increase" (1)

So: we find ourselves with the assertion that socialism improves lives, and that in order to improve lives, it must ensure that technology advances in a controlled and sustained manner. China is an example of a type of market economy that fulfills the historical role that capitalism would otherwise play in a country that had no revolutions to speak of, yet it is, nevertheless, commanded by the Communist Party. This ensures something unique: the communist State's control over the nation's future, ensuring that capitalist centralization is as painless as possible while consciously laying the foundations for socialism.

Under Marxism-Leninism, currently the only type of socialism that successfully carried out several revolutions and became the official state ideology of dozens of countries, socialism is, by definition, centralized. Within socialist countries, power lies with the people through a vanguard party, which is generally meritocratic and technocratic, and is formed by the most capable workers (this is a necessity, because for better or worse, not everyone is equipped to govern, and this is something especially true within the context of revolutionary politics, where unity and sacrifice are necessary). Obviously, in the formation of any state, one group of people always forms the government while others are governed. This has been the case since time immemorial, and although socialism may have the ultimate vision of dismantling the State, this does not happen overnight. To expect actually existing socialism to be governed directly by the people themselves (something no other country currently does or arguably did) would be setting an impossibly high standard, one destined to fail, and would cause any real-world experience of socialist construction to be dismissed for failing to adhere to something entirely fantastical and idealistic in nature.

On 5/29/2026 at 4:54 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

I also don’t think the petty bourgeois critique of the way AI fundamentally exploits intellectual labor is especially fair, As it feels like it’s predicated on the idea that objections to AI’s use of intellectual labor are primarily rooted in self-interest rather than genuine concerns about consent, ownership, compensation, or labor rights.

Ownership, compensation, consent in this case are self-serving. Copyright is the natural extension of private property under capitalism, which is not to say personal property, which is a different thing in Marxism.

Artists, in this case, want to prevent their work (which is independent and, for better or worse, not pejoratively, necessarily petty-bourgeois) from being rendered unviable by the advancement of technology, and thus losing the ability to work independently under more or less chosen and self-imposed conditions.

This is the classic anti-proletarianization impulse of the petty bourgeoisie. It is almost 1:1. Even if they themselves don't believe it to be so, many independent artists are not defending "human art" or the "unique human capacity to express oneself through art" per se, but rather their own individual ability to earn money independently as a petty bourgeois through art and commissions. That is also the reason why many of them view with suspicion those artists who "gave up" or "betrayed" the cause of independence and went to work for large companies, like Disney. At its core, it's an anti-proletarianization impulse similar, almost identical, to the one present in the peasantry during the Industrial Revolution. This is not to say art itself is not valuable, of course, or even that independent artists are all selfish people. I'm talking about the relations of production behind it in the current age of development, and how many people are subjected to them through a complex array of variables which don't rest entirely on the individual, but that nevertheless can cause the individual to unknowingly serve a given class interest.

On 5/29/2026 at 4:54 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

However, not only is that not the climate we live in (AI art today is generated from a cynical scrape of art posted online by human artists largely for the profit of these firms), but I also question the actual net value of the version of “democratization of art” that AI offers. Art inhabits this strange space of being both commodity and also something that feels often spiritual for its creators and consumers; it is not fungible in the same way that, say, a glass of milk is fungible: art bears something that is often qualitative and distinct as a product of the effort of striving toward its creation as a form of expression, not merely as the means to the end of creating a specific aesthetic product.

As a singer, I am not impressed by the sound of a voice merely for what it is as an aesthetic phenomena, but as a consequence of the craft required for a person to produce that sound. That, to me, bares categorical distinction from forms of work that can be reduced to mechanized processes through capitalist centralization and automated industrialization and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I’d say when people look to art, much in the way that people look to religion, people are looking for a reflection of something that feels true to them about their lived experience and their own desire to express it that can’t be fully captured by the automation or mechanization of that process as a form of industrial labor.

To get away from the navel gaze-y associations people usually make for people arguing for the value of art as craft, I think part of the joy people get out of art is not dissimilar to the joy they get out of watching Olympic athletes: the awe of seeing the synthesis between the work and dedication required to perform the skill and the ability to perform the skill effortlessly; no one would want to watch an AI generated Olympic ski match because the spectacle is the aliveness of it, the stakes of a person doing something difficult in real time and the possibility of them failing (and the excitement when they succeed). In that sense, I think AI only democratizes art as aesthetic product, not art as human process, which has certain social/economic value, but I think degrades the more spiritual and human dimension of the experience of art more broadly.

I have a different definition of what art is. For me, art is human expression in material form, in the form of use-value. What we call "talent", "craft", etc, which are things largely dependent on specific sociocultural contexts, are secondary variables in art. I, who cannot sing, could perfectly well sit down at a piano, learn a couple of chords, and generate a song that satisfies a personal expressive impulse. Even if I don't know how to sing, even if I use a fairly simple and widely used chord progression, I would still produce art in its use-value form, but Pitchfork (to give an example) might not give me the best score. But here, "talent" and "craft" are secondary variables, because the tangibility of the expression has already been achieved, and its main objective (the expression itself) has too.

True art (by which I mean the "quid" of art) is anonymous, collective, selfless almost. To quote the great philosopher Olivia Rodrigo: "I would be writing songs if nobody listened, and everyone hated it, and everyone thought I was bad. I would still be writing songs, because it’s what I love to do", which is an statement on art as expressive use-value, not as a platform to showcase talent, craft, etc.

This is one aspect. Another one is the fact that art and mechanization are not antitheses. Andy Warhol was very famous for introducing aspects of mechanization to an area or technique that previously fantasized about being something almost entirely manual. Warhol, in this way, did not destroy art or expression, but rather extended its meaning and possibilities. The same thing happened with algorithmic art and computers, as I mentioned in my previous comment. So art was not "reduced to a mechanical form", but enhanced by it.

In the future, a person will no longer necessarily have to know how to use FL Studio to produce, nor have the knowledge of (for example) Skrillex to make something sensitive and more or less passable in terms of avant-garde musical production. And the best part of it is that this is not because the machine decided it so, but because we found a way to streamline the process of searching and gathering sources, which is an inherently collective one. AI in this regard is a mirror of humanity: it offers back everything humanity has made, and based on everything it has made, it also helps it, and this help will grow in importance as time goes by, but it's a collective and collaborative form, much like a very early and imperfect foundation of a future copyright-less world.

Regarding the aspect of spectacle, AI will obviously change some aspects of it but will only be able to complement it. Art as a spectacle remains necessarily human. When one sets out to make art assisted by AI, it's not that one tells it "make some art for me please, I want art" but rather (if you truly want to express something real) you already has some nodes or variables to explore at the moment of starting. Art is like a reflection (once again) of the mental, of the expression that is intangible. It is a tangibilization of the intangible, and that process of transfer from the intangible to the tangible is where, in our case, AI comes in, but where other tools also came in before in arts and other disciplines. That process remains intact. AI is just the translator of this process, the assistant. It is nothing more (and nothing less) than that.

(1) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1980/101.htm

Edited May 31 by Jill

[Morphine Prince 109,683]

Genuinely who actually WANTS this slop?