Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a labor issue. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will prove to be a marginal labor issue. Or maybe it will prove to be an existential, epochal labor issue on par with industrialization or globalization, each of which revolutionized their own eras of work. Before we get completely immersed in the battle over how AI will affect workers, though, it is important to frame the playing field correctly. This is not a fight between a backward-looking labor movement on one side and technological progress on the other. Rather, this is a question of where the wealth and efficiency gains created by AI will flow.
The capitalists are trying to privatise and close the source on AI and LLM tools. They suggest it’s impossible for regular humans to run a private AI tool. This is wrong, and only disempowers workers.