Mohsin Mudassar
If you are a university student anywhere in the world, you know what ChatGPT is and what it can do for you. Despite only coming out a couple of months ago, the Artificial Intelligence Chatbot has upended higher education and stands poised to destroy the livelihoods of millions working as programmers, writers, researchers, and other roles like them. Among my friends, not a single one has written their own assignments since they discovered it. Other AI tools, like Midjourney and Dall-E, generate images based on text prompts and their integration into industries could have devastating consequences for designers and artists of all stripes.
These are just two recent innovations which stand out because they are hitting a section of the workforce that was previously thought to be safe from automation, the so-called white-collar workers. Automation has been putting blue-collar workers out of jobs for much, much longer. Artificial Intelligence is a continuation of that trend which is already ringing the death bells for professionals from doctors to drivers as well as industrial and agricultural workers. Traditionally, the idea was that these blue-collar workers would move to white-collar jobs with better pay and working conditions. This, as we can all see, is being proven wrong in front of all of our eyes.
Granted, ChatGPT cannot write research papers just yet, and Dall-e is not great at drawing hands, but these are all kinks that can be worked out with time. Of course, there are also hard limits to what AI can do; chatbots do not have empathy and are not really “intelligent” in the way that they cannot have original thoughts.
But, it does not need to be able to do those things to write copy, generate code for a business’s website, or make logos. The AI’s work – at the moment, at least – may not be as good as it would be if it were done by a human, but will that always be the case? The history of automation tells us: no. Even now, the work done by AI is good enough for many employers who would rather cut costs by not paying a human for their work.
So, if AI can do everything; what do we do? In a just world, the fruits of these technological advancements would be divided so that all of us would have to work less and could have more time for essential human activities like reading, painting, and spending time with family and friends. As it is, it seems that AI image generators will be doing the painting and we – along with our friends and families – will be doing our best not to starve after we have all lost our jobs.
Provocative speculations aside, let us imagine what the results of technological advancements in AI will be keeping in view what we know about how capitalism functions. As AI – and automation in general – progress, more and more people will lose their jobs. And as previously mentioned, there are no “safe” sectors that these newly unemployed people, whose skills have been made obsolete by AI, can go to.
This will lead, inevitably, to a drastic increase in ‘surplus populations,’ meaning segments of the population who are left unemployed or underemployed because their labour is no longer needed in the capitalist system. Pakistan already has a huge population of these people, most of whom find their livelihoods through various forms of self-employment or as daily-wage labourers.
Since these people are not needed in the economy, the state completely ignores them and their needs, forcing them to live in miserable conditions. They live extremely marginalized lives, most of the time in city slums without access to clean water, gas, electricity, and other public services. As the triumphant march of automation continues – and machines and algorithms get better at doing our jobs – ever larger portions of the population will be rendered surplus and therefore useless to the capitalist society and state. This is the logical end of the current trend of automation under capitalism.
This is also where a fundamental contradiction in the capitalist system arises. Capitalism thrives on consumption to generate ever-greater profits and it needs a class of consumers who buy commodities and fuel the economic engine. However, when people lose their jobs or face wage cuts, they are no longer able to spend as much on buying commodities, which causes companies’ profits to decline and the GDP to shrink. This is referred to as an economic recession.
Thus, capitalism’s drive to reduce costs and increase profits are constantly at odds with each other. This is a contradiction built into the capitalist system from the first day and it periodically pushes the whole system into crises that result in economic devastation for the working classes. Meanwhile, the ruling capitalist class only emerges stronger from each crisis due to government bailouts and the socialization of losses.
Just like every other advance in automation before it, AI will cause millions of job losses and a huge increase in surplus populations. It is particularly scary for young people who opted for “safe” white-collar fields that they thought were safe from automation and are now left with no idea about what trajectories their professional careers will take, or whether they will be able to find formal employment at all. It will increase productivity without increasing wages and further increase poverty, precarity, and suffering.
Now let us imagine a system different from the one we currently live under. A system which is built not around the maximization of profit for a few corporations but rather for the maximization of human well-being. Let’s be clear that there are only futures of AI, one which I have talked about above – the capitalist future – and the other which I am asking you to imagine now – the socialist future.
AI does not have to be a threat to the livelihood of the ordinary while collar worker. Whereas the capitalist system pits man against man and man against machine in the race for selling his labour for survival, the socialist system allows man to cooperate with both his fellow man and machine to achieve better standards of living for himself and his fellow man. With the socialization of the surplus created by AI, all of us would have a higher standard of living and more free time to give to our family, friends, and the essentially human pursuits of art and literature.
This attainable imaginary stands in stark contrast to the capitalist present and future – free from capitalism’s greed and self-created disasters. Technological advancements like AI in themselves are neither good nor bad. However, any advancement under capitalism will necessarily be used to advance the interests of capital and capitalists at the expense of workers. Conversely, under socialism, the same innovation can be used to advance the interests of the vast majority of the population.
Artificial Intelligence, once again, underscores for us the need for reckoning with our only two options; capitalism and its techno-dystopian future or socialism with its promise of liberation from exploitation and a better life. It is up to our generation now to make this choice. And if we choose the latter option, to resist the capitalist system and its destructive tendencies at every turn while organizing to make our vision of a future free of poverty, exploitation, and precarity a reality.
