Asher Dupuy-Spencer y David Calnitsky
Translation: Florence Oroz
Some technologies increase productivity, but others reshape not only our society but also our physiology. Whatever the future of artificial intelligence, the socialist strategy must be the same: increase the power of labor.
Since the very dawn of humanity, the sudden appearance of new technologies has had profound social consequences, although not all of them immediately evident. As the way we live changes, so do we. Sometimes, deeply.
For example, the brains of Homo sapiens across the Earth are smaller now than they were 300,000 years ago. One of the many theories competing to explain this phenomenon says that the emergence of language and the distribution of knowledge in society reduced the complexity of the problems that needed to be solved by individuals. In essence, early human technologies—culture and language—massively reduced the cognitive load on individuals. Instead, it was externalized into stories, traditions, religions, and crafts. We now have smaller brains than our early ancestors, but we know much more than they could have dreamed of knowing.
Consider another example: the use of pointed sticks, especially projectiles, in early human societies. This simple technological advance helped our ancestors hunt large quadrupeds like mammoths, but it may also have played a crucial role in fostering a more egalitarian society by diminishing the power of physically dominant males. For famed primatologist Christopher Boehm, this sudden redistribution of the potential for violence explains the decline in the types of reactive aggression we see among other great apes. Pointed sticks reorganized power among humans: technology fostered an evolved culture of political egalitarianism that sharply distinguishes hominids from the violent chimpanzee, our closest cousin.
Then, about twelve thousand years ago, new technologies began to challenge this “pointed stick” egalitarianism. Humans harnessed the power of evolution and began selectively breeding plants and animals, making a lasting and countable surplus possible. The so-called Neolithic Revolution was not only food: it brought with it new tools, relationships and social structures. The surplus generated by agriculture paved the way for the establishment of agrarian states. It was then that human societies first witnessed the emergence of structured hierarchies and nascent state bureaucracies, complete with their trappings of power and subjugation. The weapons that once made our egalitarian nature possible were now the tools of power, exploitation and domination.
Early experimental gardeners were not trying to build a hierarchy from wild grass seeds. That was an unintended consequence of a very useful innovation. The accumulation of wealth and power, and the state institutions that emerged to defend them, also gave rise to civilization and written language. When agriculture emerged, we saw a decline in health and life expectancy; but over time it facilitated longer, richer and healthier lives, and a much more widespread human population.
The emergence of capitalism, however, marked a change in the pace and pattern of technological change. As any student of Karl Marx will know, capitalism is characterized by constant, and sometimes radical, revolutions in the ways in which human beings produce what they need. In precapitalist modes of social organization, growth was slow and characterized by periodic demographic collapse. Under capitalism, output per worker has constantly increased and all Malthusian limits have been surpassed.
Over the last hundred years, despite enormous technological advances, certain central features of capitalism have remained stable: state power, dependence on markets, private appropriation of the social surplus, etc. But if the past is anything to go by, every new technological advance can have epoch-defining consequences. The history of humanity is a testimony to the transformative power of technology. Past advances have magnified human productive capabilities, but some have also led to the restructuring of social life and the redistribution of power.
At least since the Luddites, and consistently since the 1960s, people on the left—and across the political spectrum, for that matter—have worried about the labor market implications of these relentless technological advances. This is logical. New production techniques have often eliminated labor to reduce costs. Fortunately, the increase in total production has compensated in most cases, allowing the creation of new products and markets.
However, innovation in the digital age has so far not produced the enormous increases in total productivity that were anticipated. Computers, robotics, algorithms, Internet communications and, now, artificial intelligence (AI) based on large linguistic models have been integrated into the production process. However, per capita productivity growth remains significantly lower than in the postwar period, especially in countries that were already at the forefront of technology.
Since the arrival of ChatGPT, people are starting to worry again. Struggling to come to terms with the implications of recent advances in AI, experts and policymakers have accidentally rediscovered the double-edged nature of technological disruptions. While some envision a dystopian future in which joblessness will prevail and profits will only benefit the owners of capital, others imagine a utopian world free of work. As with previous rounds of technological advances, people are beginning to wonder which jobs will be automated and to what extent.
No one can be sure what the future holds when it comes to such technological advancements. What we have, however, is a few hundred years of capitalist history, and that allows some general lessons to be drawn. The automation of employment has typically resulted in the absorption of labor in other industries. These displacements of labor have been associated with significant changes in the distribution of power and income in economies.
Most of the major innovations of the last century resulted in increased managerial prerogatives, and were intended to do so. Technical change is rarely neutral with respect to the effects it has on the subjective experience of work. The power of working-class institutions, unions and parties can influence the effects of automation on incomes and employment, but they have rarely determined the trajectory of technological change itself.
Every once in a while, however, a technological advance does, in fact, manage to fundamentally transform the terms on which we operate, not just as a class or society, but as a species. Like the arrival of language or agriculture, the rise of artificial intelligence could very well be one of those epoch-defining changes. But it is not obvious that the effect on employment is the mechanism through which we experience this disorder. As we write, AI-powered war rages in Gaza and Eastern Europe. Terrifying new modes of surveillance are being deployed across the planet. And it is increasingly difficult to discern digitally augmented or produced images and sounds from those captured from real life. These non-commercial applications are politically significant and, frankly, scarier than any job change.
Science and technology are poised to advance in novel ways and could very well progress in directions very difficult for many, if not all, to understand. This carries both risks and possibilities. For example, the promise of a healthier, wealthier world is very real, but so is the terrifying buildup of destructive military applications powered by artificial intelligence.
As has been the case since the dawn of the labor movement, socialists must engage in politics in a changing technological landscape. Fighting automation, as such, may be a losing battle, but defending worker autonomy and power does not have to be. Demanding distribution of the spoils of efficiency gains is the minimum. But with respect to the enormous unknowns of artificial intelligence, there is no obvious path.
What we do know is that workers and ordinary people should have decision-making power in its deployment. In a famous article, Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal wrote about how the problems of collective action differ for elites and ordinary workers. The interests of the elites are transparent—all need comes after profit—and this can be achieved by technocrats and lawyers doing their bidding.
The interests of the working class, however, are never transparent: they always involve dialogue and must be discovered. Some people simply need more income; others may focus on workplace safety; some have health-related needs or children that require insurance; Others still would prefer to negotiate to have more free time. Dialogue has always been necessary not only to achieve, but also to understand the goals of ordinary people.
The future of artificial intelligence is no different, and will require continued dialogue to discover what our interests really are. This process will be a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for human governance of new technologies. A decent future will require the vast majority of people to have a voice when it comes to the research, development and deployment of technology. This is only possible with stronger unions and socialist parties with the capacity to challenge for power. There is considerable uncertainty around the pace and content of the coming years of technical change. We must ensure that we leave our mark as much as possible.
What is good for a few is rarely good for many, and even less so in the short term. In the long term, let’s hope that—unlike what happened with the advent of human language and culture—our brains won’t shrink in the process.
