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What's the Marxist analysis of "generative AI"?
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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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The communist manifesto was published in 1848. Our modern understanding of Intellectual Property didn't really start until the Berne Convention of 1886, 3 years after Marx's death. Also the concept of intellectual property changed many times since then. Music was not even copyrightable until 1906. Copyrighted software did not exist until 1976. Pre-1976 software is considered public domain. During Marx's life time, he did not experience the modern concept of Intellectual Property, it was not a thing yet.
Kind of a side note, but I think it's important to point out that while they didn't write about intellectual property and automation, Marx clearly defined the basis from which they came to develop, and that is essential to understanding both.
Laws are a manifestation of property relations, not the other way around. Intellectual property is a specific manifestation of the general private property that dictates capitalism. The phenomenon of music as commodity wasn't as developed then, but the analysis of private property in general, which then dictates the specific forms of property, is all there.
Regarding automation, Capital Vol. 1 deals with the atomization of the work process leading into increasingly simplistic and specific actions, which lead to the creation of increasingly specific tools as we get to understand the processes better through practice and science. While this isn't specifically about automation, it defines the process through which human development managed to substitute physical labor for machine labor over time. Machines were a specific form of it, automation is another, and AI might be a new one (that is particularly applicable to creative labor/commodity production).
I'm only pointing this out because your comment may read like "don't bother reading Marx to understand these phenomena" for some
I think it's toxic for people to interpret comments as if they have malice, when nowhere in my comment says "don't read Marx". It is rude for anyone on hexbear to assume that a fellow hexbear user would be saying "don't read Marx". Are we on reddit? I thought we were better than that.
My comment only says that during Marx's time, the concept of intellectual property was a very different and simpler thing. Also the communist manifesto is one of Marx's simpler works. Many Marxists even tell people not to bother with reading that specific book because it's not all the interesting. Yes, Marxist concepts apply to modern intellectually property but the way that Marx wrote about intellectual property is very different than concepts that are important to AI.
I would compare AI to the industrial revolution. Marx talks about how new machines during the industrial revolution, new machines allowed workers to produce more commodities with less time needed. New technology allows capitalists to exploit workers more. That doesn't make the technology necessarily bad, it is just used in a bad way. Generative AI is comparable to a factory machine.
Yeah, that is not what I said at all. I just said your comment could be interpreted as that by a random person reading. In fact, I assumed you are not saying that, which is why I took the time to add that at the end.
Which is exactly what you're doing right now
Due to my own background, I may be remembering more discussed on the topic than there actually is, but the translation on Marxism.org uses the phrase intellectual production multiple times to discuss what is clearly a form of intellectual property. The concept of The Commons, including it's form as a well from which ideas are drawn, goes back thousands of years. And while it may not be an exact 1 to 1 of our present day, Marx was definitely familiar with the enclosure of The Commons. I doubt he would have that much of a problem extrapolating a scenario resembling our present day.