We emphasize the importance of the ongoing conversations and arguments between libertarian commoners and state-oriented socialists in conceiving such a formation (Bauwens and Jose 2018; Murdock 2018). Within such a new form of ‘vast association’ – to cite Marx’s (1848) definition of communism – we can imagine the application of ML to a wide variety of public and communal projects in ways that erode capital’s social subsumption and replace it with new priorities. This is where there exist the possibilities of the wide (re)training of AI in logics other than that of the market, which otherwise points to a liquidation of the human as a frictional drag on profit accumulation. But we think that such a true democratization of AI should not be foreclosed by the assumption that its technologies would automatically be accelerated. Working hours might well be substantially reduced by the application of new technologies, with important gains in free time, but postcapitalist ‘work’ as a site of societal purpose and collective association would not necessarily be annihilated, cutting a swelling ‘useless class’ loose into an opioids-plus-Netflix wasteland. On the contrary, real collective decision-making about fourth industrial revolution technologies must include the possibility of roads not taken, and humans rejecting the liquidation of their activities by machinic intelligence. This would be a mode of production with something better to say than ‘the AI-generated UBI cheque is in the email’.
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