A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Will generative AI destroy... capitalism? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The jobs that generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is making 
disappear-right now, because the process is already underway-are all 
intellectual or artistic professions. Doctors, writers, lawyers, 
photographers, translators, illustrators, videographers, journalists, 
printers, accountants, and so on, only have a few years left. Bad news 
or good news? ---- Destroy! ---- Capitalism, considered a "mode of 
production," is most often analyzed as progress compared to the modes of 
production that preceded it. Capitalists have rationalized and 
diversified the production of objects and machines, increased 
productivity with assembly line work, mechanized agriculture, and 
globalized the economy. In return for achieving this, capitalism has 
destroyed crafts, both in cities and in the countryside, as well as 
organic food production (there were no industrial inputs before the end 
of the 19th century, apart from manure or composted plant waste). This 
destruction of manual trades and skills is virtually complete, and while 
some artisans and organic market gardeners still exist, they are only 
marginal in the "core" countries. Their persistence against all 
odds-against capitalism!-is nonetheless essential from a political 
standpoint: this margin holds enormous revolutionary potential since it 
still produces food and goods that have meaning.

Until now, capitalism had not directly attacked intellectual 
professions. On the contrary, it had rather developed and overvalued 
them compared to manual labor. The recent emergence, at the end of 2022, 
of the IAG (Integrated Agricultural and Food Systems) constitutes, in 
this sense, a revolution and even one of the defining challenges of the 
century (along with the over-armament of states and the slide towards 
war, not to mention the likelihood of widespread famines), but not only 
that. It is also a challenge to capitalism itself. Because, from the 
perspective of the capitalist mode of production, IAG destroys the 
enormous sources of profit derived from these intellectual professions. 
In other words, IAG undermines capitalism itself!

The nature of the challenge

Capitalism is a mode of production based primarily on destruction-which 
doesn't mean that capitalism only destroys: it also creates, otherwise 
it would have disappeared long ago. However, capitalism conceives of and 
implements its capacity for destruction before launching its creative 
process. In other words, this system establishes itself where it knows 
it can destroy. Colonialism was thus an enterprise of destroying the 
social, economic, and political structures of subjugated countries, 
forcing them to participate in the capitalist system, to the benefit of 
the colonizing countries. Some would say that this was merely collateral 
damage, but no: this destruction was the essential condition for the 
introduction of capitalism.

In the 1940s, the economist Schumpeter, with his theory of creative 
destruction, legitimized destruction, which he saw as merely 
accompanying creation and being a necessary condition for it. Schumpeter 
thus provided capitalism with its theoretical roadmap up to its current 
stage. It is therefore no coincidence that he has become, in our time, 
the most cited and discussed classical economist; he emphasized the 
challenge that capitalism has, until now, always met: destroying in 
order to create and perpetuate itself.

According to some, destruction is inherent to the human species. But no: 
Erich Fromm, in *The Passion to Destroy*, showed that human 
destructiveness is one of the essential driving forces of modern 
society, if not its fundamental engine, but that it is merely an 
adaptation to this destructive capitalist society. Capitalism destroys, 
and we have adapted to this worldview.

During the 20th century, in its destructive-creative cycle, capitalism 
gradually shifted the sources of profit. He reorganized them 
geographically, destroying the basic production of the "core" countries 
to "export" it to the "peripheries" of the "Global South," and 
structurally, for example, by replacing local market gardening with 
industrial agriculture. Thus, Paris and its inner suburbs were 
self-sufficient in food until the eve of the Great War; today, like any 
metropolis, the city no longer produces any food; it is rich in its 
intellectual activities. Throughout the world, office automation, 
computerization, and now the omnipresence of the internet in industrial 
and commercial enterprises are the most obvious examples of these recent 
structural transformations.

The challenge for capitalists is to constantly find what can be 
destroyed in order to "displace" it elsewhere or produce it differently, 
so as to conquer areas still "backward" according to the capitalist mode 
of production, or to invent new methods of work that generate profit. 
However, nowadays, everything related to concrete, material production 
is already either exported to the Global South or restructured in the 
countries of the core, with, for example, assembly lines requiring fewer 
and fewer workers-hence the persistence of mass unemployment. What is to 
be done? Where can sources of profit be created?

The problem

: Schumpeter's theory will soon no longer work. With the rise of GAI 
(Global Industrial Automation), the sectors it destroys are no longer 
replaced by other innovative sectors employing humans, but by an 
absolute megamachine: GAI itself. A technology abolishes intellectual 
professions. A purely mechanical revolution throws humans into 
unemployment. In the coming months, the situation will worsen, as the AI 
designers promise that AI systems will improve themselves, no longer 
needing humans like "scorers" to train them.

The system is self-destructing. And Musk's delusions of conquering the 
universe won't change anything; quite the contrary, because Musk will 
devote astronomical sums to a dead-end path. This won't be the first 
time that "cutting-edge" capitalists have gone astray with insane 
projects. Consider, for France, the Plan Calcul, the Concorde, the 
Minitel, the Superphénix, and the A380-projects with astronomical costs 
whose short- or medium-term failure was, nevertheless, not difficult to 
predict. As for the other major delusion of capitalism in its current 
stage, transhumanism, it follows the same logic as AI: the 
technologization of everything that was biological and human, simply human.

Thus, there are really only two possible outcomes.

First

, if the system self-destructs as it develops, and if AI is this stage 
of destroying intellectual professions, sources of enormous profits for 
the system, then the first, classic outcome is the destruction of 
humanity in its most advanced form: war, or even famine or disease. This 
was already Robert McNamara's thesis when he was director of the World 
Bank in the 1970s.

Indeed, from a purely capitalist (and therefore cynical) perspective, 
McNamara is right: if there are fewer, far fewer, human beings, those 
who survive will have more opportunities to, first, rebuild what needs 
rebuilding, then to produce food, survive, and perhaps one day, finally 
live without fear of tomorrow. This is exactly what happened with the 
Black Death in the 1340s: the survivors were then able to cultivate only 
the best land, which allowed them to develop other sectors besides 
agriculture, since farming was more productive and therefore required 
fewer workers. This is also what happens after a war, which gives the 
illusion that war allows for qualitative leaps and technological 
progress, but it is the destruction of human beings that leads, in a 
capitalist system, to this type of "progress." It is pointless to dwell 
here on the horror and absolute chaos that a
world war would represent for humanity in the 21st century, given the 
technological means that would be deployed to destroy it...

Second outcome

: The other outcome that AI directly brings about is the complete 
virtualization of life, of our lives, of our lifestyles. This is, 
broadly speaking, the thesis developed in the first installment of The 
Matrix. Humans, literally weaned on AI productions (entertained by music 
or videos generated by AI, and also treated by AI), would have nothing 
left to do, no productive tasks to perform. But then, who would feed 
them? In The Matrix, the question is sidestepped with a science-fiction 
illusion: humans are nourished by a kind of amniotic fluid. But let's 
return to Earth: who will produce the food, and using what agricultural 
techniques, on a planet plagued by climate change and rising temperatures?

If we continue this line of reasoning from a capitalist perspective, the 
most cynical, such as Gianroberto Casaleggio, the ideologue of the Five 
Star Movement in Italy, who died in 2016, believed that humanity should 
be reduced to one billion individuals. In such a scenario, the survivors 
would benefit from increased agricultural productivity on the best land 
(or the only land still arable, given the impending agroecological 
disasters). In this case, the two possible solutions-war and widespread 
artificial agriculture-would combine... to the great detriment of human 
beings and all living things on this planet. Capitalism would take on 
new forms, so radical would the destruction have been, with manual 
skills lost and ancestral, efficient, and simple techniques wiped out.

Would this be a new mode of production? In any case, a form of 
capitalism that will have little in common with the current one, and 
which will be even less livable for the few surviving humans, who will 
become slaves to AI that will think for them, entertain them, care for 
them, and feed them throughout their "lives."
Clearly, AI will bring nothing good, absolutely nothing. Nothing but 
pure, absolute destruction. Calling on Schumpeter or Musk for help will 
only delay the realization. It is up to us to reject AI immediately, 
absolutely, daily, and not just partially. We must not use any of this 
technology, which also implies deadly ideological choices. Annihilate AI!

Élisée Personne
Contact: groupe.huko@autistici.org

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=9149
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