WHAT LABOURS?
The differences between humans and animals are not as sharp as Marx believed, and the distinctions between human and machines are becoming blurrier the more sophisticated ML systems become. However, do any of these examples of animal and machine production or seemingly imaginative, creative and adaptable behaviour actually challenge Marx’s assumption that labour is an exclusively human characteristic? Proposing that Marx’s anthropological conceptualization of labour and value creation is void by pointing out that whatever he refers to as uniquely human is also found in the wider animal kingdom is, as Lawrence Wilde argues, no more than a rhetorical strategy whereby a scientific source is used to ‘blur the distinction in productive techniques without genuinely getting to grips with Marx’s argument’ (2000: 44). It would also be a mistake to equate the narrow capabilities and particular functioning of even the most sophisticated deep-learning system with labour. While Marx’s anthropocentrism must be challenged, merely listing a set of behaviours or productive activities does not overturn his argument. As long as AI systems can only perform one or even a few narrowly defined tasks, it does not matter how creative or imaginative they appear to be, their behaviour is not labour.
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inhuman power