1. Why is this relevant for r/neoliberal?
AI is shaping up to be the defining policy and governance challenge of the next decade and the grassroots left is deeply misinformed about the state of the technology.
2. What do you think people should discuss about it?
The article draws a sharp analogy between the left’s “AI is just autocomplete” consensus and conservative climate denial: both use a technically adjacent fact to dismiss a phenomenon with overwhelming real-world evidence behind it. The piece also raises a more actionable question: if the left actually engaged with AI seriously, what would good left-coded AI policy look like? The 44% vs. 28% daily AI usage gap between Republican and Democratic political consultants is also worth discussing as a leading indicator of electoral consequences.
StayOffPoliticalSubs on
“Guys please use AI, PLEASE, our funders asked about something called “Return on investment” and didn’t take kindly to us asking what that was.”
PristineHornet9999 on
interesting how AI became “right-coded” in the first place
Alandro_Sul on
I think AI applications like chatbots/grok/”info summaries” are just inherently authoritarian-coded. Consolidating knowledge into one privately-owned source, whose values are explicitly moderated by right-wing capitalists, all powered by illegally pirating the work of scholars and journalists… how do you make a “left-coded” version of that? It is completely rotten at the core, there is no way to make it good.
The only “left-coded” approach to AI I can think of it admitting that the chatbots are garbage and promising to instead create incentives for applying AI in robotics or actually useful activities. If we could create a regulatory environment that would tax the ChatGPT/Grok model out of existence and instead push companies to invent roombas that don’t suck or automatic surgery machines to make medical care affordable, that would be great!
Commandant_Donut on
“The HTML gap is massive! If workers don’t learn HTML today, they will absolutely have no future!”
Mega_Giga_Tera on
In some ways the left has become conservative. Especially with regard to technology. Tech advancements are seen as a threat to labor and conversations about productivity are labeled “corporate greed.”
It’s not the same conservatism as the 20th century, but it very much is stemming from a desire to halt advancement and return to the economics of our parents’ generation, despite how futile and wrong headed that desire may be.
Thuggin95 on
No matter how much certain segments of the online left virtue signal about AI being bad and people being bad if they use it, polls show Democrats use AI even more than Republicans lol
DaneLimmish on
You sure?
ditalinidog on
I don’t think the left is inherently anti tech, it is rightfully critical of the only corporations that actually have the money and infrastructure to invest in new developments. Their entire approach to tech in the last 10-20 years has been increasingly leveraged to hook people to their products rather than actually targeting efficiency of their careers or lives. Our current administration is completely inept in dealing with market-breaking new tech and the growing dependence of people on these companies’ products, and in some cases is actively encouraging worsening the dynamic.
I am not anti AI, I work in data science now and was previously pretty optimistic about it before LLMs. They have some strong use cases. But there’s a lot of bullshit marketing to sift through and it’s an absolute awful time in politics for this.
fuckbombcore on
My issue with AI is that it doesnt do anything useful(yet?)
11 Comments
Submission statement:
1. Why is this relevant for r/neoliberal?
AI is shaping up to be the defining policy and governance challenge of the next decade and the grassroots left is deeply misinformed about the state of the technology.
2. What do you think people should discuss about it?
The article draws a sharp analogy between the left’s “AI is just autocomplete” consensus and conservative climate denial: both use a technically adjacent fact to dismiss a phenomenon with overwhelming real-world evidence behind it. The piece also raises a more actionable question: if the left actually engaged with AI seriously, what would good left-coded AI policy look like? The 44% vs. 28% daily AI usage gap between Republican and Democratic political consultants is also worth discussing as a leading indicator of electoral consequences.
“Guys please use AI, PLEASE, our funders asked about something called “Return on investment” and didn’t take kindly to us asking what that was.”
interesting how AI became “right-coded” in the first place
I think AI applications like chatbots/grok/”info summaries” are just inherently authoritarian-coded. Consolidating knowledge into one privately-owned source, whose values are explicitly moderated by right-wing capitalists, all powered by illegally pirating the work of scholars and journalists… how do you make a “left-coded” version of that? It is completely rotten at the core, there is no way to make it good.
The only “left-coded” approach to AI I can think of it admitting that the chatbots are garbage and promising to instead create incentives for applying AI in robotics or actually useful activities. If we could create a regulatory environment that would tax the ChatGPT/Grok model out of existence and instead push companies to invent roombas that don’t suck or automatic surgery machines to make medical care affordable, that would be great!
“The HTML gap is massive! If workers don’t learn HTML today, they will absolutely have no future!”
In some ways the left has become conservative. Especially with regard to technology. Tech advancements are seen as a threat to labor and conversations about productivity are labeled “corporate greed.”
It’s not the same conservatism as the 20th century, but it very much is stemming from a desire to halt advancement and return to the economics of our parents’ generation, despite how futile and wrong headed that desire may be.
No matter how much certain segments of the online left virtue signal about AI being bad and people being bad if they use it, polls show Democrats use AI even more than Republicans lol
You sure?
I don’t think the left is inherently anti tech, it is rightfully critical of the only corporations that actually have the money and infrastructure to invest in new developments. Their entire approach to tech in the last 10-20 years has been increasingly leveraged to hook people to their products rather than actually targeting efficiency of their careers or lives. Our current administration is completely inept in dealing with market-breaking new tech and the growing dependence of people on these companies’ products, and in some cases is actively encouraging worsening the dynamic.
I am not anti AI, I work in data science now and was previously pretty optimistic about it before LLMs. They have some strong use cases. But there’s a lot of bullshit marketing to sift through and it’s an absolute awful time in politics for this.
My issue with AI is that it doesnt do anything useful(yet?)
This is AI propaganda