In making this critique of capitalism’s encounter with AI we also, however, take issue with leftist theorists who share such concerns, some of whom, like us, quote Marx in their evaluations of AI. So here we quarrel with interlocutors we respect and have learned from, but with whom we differ. There are two specific left perspectives against which we argue, perspectives that we dub ‘minimizing’ and ‘maximizing’ views on AI.
The left ‘minimalist’ position dismisses current discourses on AI as hype and hucksterism. A more moderate version grants them a limited credibility but insists this is not sufficient to seriously change previous analyses of capital and class (Huws 2014; Moody 2018a). For a strong statement of this minimalist position, we can take Astra Taylor’s ‘The Automation Charade’ (2018), an essay whose basic thesis is that ‘the rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated’ (like many authors, Taylor sees AI and robotics as pretty much synonymous, an unfortunate gloss we discuss later). Taylor agrees with our point that technological change, and automation in particular, is not a neutral process, but rather wielded from a position of class power. However, her main argument is that it is not just the actuality of automation, but more its possibility, that is weaponized to intimidate workers. She cites the threats of robotized burger-flippers and touch-screen self-service kiosks by fast food corporations trying quell the Fight for 15 minimum wage movement. Some of those threats proved hollow, and those that have been realized, Taylor points out, still leave lots of workers toiling in McDonald’s. In light of this, she proposes ‘making our idea of automation itself obsolescent. A new term, “fauxtomation”, seems far more fitting’ (2018). Socialist feminists, she suggests, have, through their close engagement with domestic toil as unwaged work, a special insight into capitalism’s ineradicable dependence on human labour, even where that labour is unacknowledged, unrewarded and conducted by women and racialized minorities. She goes on to stress the way the introduction of machines has intensified, rather than eliminated, work, emphasizing the behind-the-scenes dependence of Silicon Valley’s digital platforms on the invisible work of figures such as content moderators. Against this background, Taylor takes as a clarion-call moment of insight a response she reports from the famous Marxist feminist theorist, Silvia Federici, to a conference question about capital’s tendency to generate ‘surplus populations’: ‘Don’t let them make you think that you are disposable.
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inhuman power