I mean nobody has time to invest in being good at everything. Everybody has specific things they find more interesting than others. It’s not just about our shitty society preventing people from investing in these skills. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that technology makes us more ignorant.
Language is what separates us from all other great apes, and you are trying to frame that like any other skill? The machine deskills the worker in the labor process. Text generation is subsuming the skill of literacy from the laborer and into the machine. Reliance on AI text generation will, over time, as the labor force is reproduced, deskill those workers in literacy.
It will have knock on effects as it makes those workers reliant on the model for understanding, interpretation, and comprehension. It is going to make humans, as a collection of thinkers, less capable of doing the fundamental thing that makes us human; communicate with language.
Everything Marx has written in regards to how machines impact the labor process and the laborer apply to AI, and it has deep ramifications for future laborers. It’s baffling to me someone might think otherwise.
The idea that people will stop being able to use language because models can generate text is not a serious take. Frankly, I have a hard time accepting that you genuinely believe what you wrote there.
People will become less literate, which involves the core skills; reading and writing, which are deeply involved in the act communicating with language. Reading and writing directly builds a persons vocabulary, something needed for effective communication and comprehension.
Students are already, at nearly all grade levels, using AI to write for them and to provide reading synopses. Schools have not adapted and are instead embracing AI tools in their institutions as both a show of complicity but also surrender. Surrender because of the ubiquitous access of these tools and the crushing pressure educators are under thanks to our education bureaucracy. Complicity because higher education is a broken system catered to the capitalist class, deeply in league with their demands.
The risk is developing generations of new laborers that are no longer functionally literate, which is required for participating in society at large and challenging it: opening bank accounts, reading ingredients of food products, understanding medication or technical instructions, signing contracts, etc. It puts the underclass at risk of being functionally illiterate, making them more reliant on the upper class that controls the models and means of communication.
This is one reason why the AI monopoly is aggressively targeting education. It’s to produce a functionally illiterate underclass. If you’re functionally illiterate, you are both less able to comprehend critical literature, but also less able to express yourself and your experiences. You will be less able to comprehend things like job contracts, work policy, and labor laws without assistance. You’ll be preconditioned to accept the status quo, since your capacity to understand your conditions and challenge them will be stunted.
The other reason is the privatization of education. These partnerships will be training the next generation of “ai educators” rife with capitalist white wash, ready to “replace” teachers and then point to the poor outcome of public education (on the back of their tools) to push privatization laws and public private partnerships that benefit the AI monopoly.
None of this changes the tension that is the way the machine (ai) impacts the laborer. The free access to these tools will build a dependency on them as they are more and more integrated into our means of communication. It diminishes laborers ability to independently express themselves, which makes them more likely to use the machine, which further diminishes their ability to express themselves. It starts as an attempt at being more efficient, but becomes a dependency as it diminishes previous levels of efficiency. This was true of the cotten gin and will be the same with ai. The obvious difference is that you are not spinning cotton as a means of interpersonal communication to navigate every day life, compared to reading, writing, orating, using language to navigate your every day life.
Weird how I’ve been using AI tools for over two years now and haven’t become functionally illiterate nor have I forgotten how to write code. The education system will certainly need to adapt to developments of new technology as it always has in the past. Your thesis would also suggest that CPC doesn’t understand how material dialectic work given that China is embracing AI at all levels of society. Seems to me that you’re just creating a moral panic because you have personal biases against this new technology.
Your personal experience isn’t representative of the systemic reality. You were educated prior to the implementation of AI, and seem to not be interested in even positing what impact unfettered access to it will have over the lifetime of a student from early grades to collage level. “The education system will certainly need to adapt to developments of new technology as it always has in the past.” Is such a empty platitude. LLMs strike at the rot inside the education system, and effectively “solve” it for all the metrics that matter for progressing to graduation for both primary and secondary education. It would take a fundamental restructuring of education coupled with a principled and aggressive approach to combating the negative impact AI systems will have on early learners.
The level of applied Marxist theory in China is debatable, and their economic activities lend themselves more towards the realization of Keynesian economics then anything. There has recently been a push to build more educational support for Marxism in China but for decades many economists in China were getting their education from American institutions. All that said, they are still managing the contradictions of capitalism better then any other nation. They are still being squeezed by external capitalist forces and their national capitalist class should always be held as suspect, since their is still opportunity for counter revolution in China. Regardless of my personal perspective on China, the creation of AI in China is still a creation of the capitalist class in China, and its implementation in their enterprises will be very different then the CPCs implementation in “all levels of society”. Last I heard they were implementing it in “all levels of government”, maybe that’s changed.
Regardless, you historically take a very uncritical view of AI, and I’m not sure if that’s because you are justifying your own personal consumption of the technology or simply holding an accelerationist perspective on the matter. What I am sure of, however, is this this conversation is going to be fruitless for both of us. I’ve made my position clear I think, and so have you.
Your assertions aren’t representative of systemic reality either. I’m very much interested in having a rational discussion about how this technology will be used and how it will impact society. However, claiming that it’s going to lead to people not being able to use language is not that.
LLMs strike at the rot inside the education system, and effectively “solve” it for all the metrics that matter for progressing to graduation for both primary and secondary education. It would take a fundamental restructuring of education coupled with a principled and aggressive approach to combating the negative impact AI systems will have on early learners.
Yes, it will take fundamental restructuring of the education system because simply memorizing trivia is no longer a valuable skill.
The level of applied Marxist theory in China is debatable, and their economic activities lend themselves more towards the realization of Keynesian economics then anything.
It’s incredible that managed to convince yourself that you understand socialism better than people who are actually building a socialist society.
They are still being squeezed by external capitalist forces and their national capitalist class should always be held as suspect, since their is still opportunity for counter revolution in China.
About as much opportunity as there is for pigs to sprout wings an fly.
Regardless of my personal perspective on China, the creation of AI in China is still a creation of the capitalist class in China, and its implementation in their enterprises will be very different then the CPCs implementation in “all levels of society”. Last I heard they were implementing it in “all levels of government”, maybe that’s changed.
The reality of China is that the capitalist class is subordinate to the socialist state, and activities which the state sees as being harmful to society are shut down with prejudice. A great example of this is how DeepSeek was born. The company originally focused on quant trading and the government decided it was destabilizing the economy, so the whole industry was shut down forcing the company to pivot. If AI was seen as harmful by CPC, then the exact same thing would happen.
Yet, we see the exact opposite with AI being integrated in government services, education, healthcare, and industry. It’s also quite telling that majority of people in China see this technology in a positive light as opposed to people living under western regimes. You just hand wave this incontinent fact away because it doesn’t fit your doomsday narrative.
Regardless, you historically take a very uncritical view of AI, and I’m not sure if that’s because you are justifying your own personal consumption of the technology or simply holding an accelerationist perspective on the matter. What I am sure of, however, is this this conversation is going to be fruitless for both of us. I’ve made my position clear I think, and so have you.
By take uncritical view of AI you mean I take a rational view of this technology as being a new tool that we must learn to integrate into society. I completely agree that this discussion is going to be as pointless as every other discussion we’ve had previously on the subject.
I mean nobody has time to invest in being good at everything. Everybody has specific things they find more interesting than others. It’s not just about our shitty society preventing people from investing in these skills. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that technology makes us more ignorant.
Language is what separates us from all other great apes, and you are trying to frame that like any other skill? The machine deskills the worker in the labor process. Text generation is subsuming the skill of literacy from the laborer and into the machine. Reliance on AI text generation will, over time, as the labor force is reproduced, deskill those workers in literacy.
It will have knock on effects as it makes those workers reliant on the model for understanding, interpretation, and comprehension. It is going to make humans, as a collection of thinkers, less capable of doing the fundamental thing that makes us human; communicate with language.
Everything Marx has written in regards to how machines impact the labor process and the laborer apply to AI, and it has deep ramifications for future laborers. It’s baffling to me someone might think otherwise.
The idea that people will stop being able to use language because models can generate text is not a serious take. Frankly, I have a hard time accepting that you genuinely believe what you wrote there.
People will become less literate, which involves the core skills; reading and writing, which are deeply involved in the act communicating with language. Reading and writing directly builds a persons vocabulary, something needed for effective communication and comprehension.
Students are already, at nearly all grade levels, using AI to write for them and to provide reading synopses. Schools have not adapted and are instead embracing AI tools in their institutions as both a show of complicity but also surrender. Surrender because of the ubiquitous access of these tools and the crushing pressure educators are under thanks to our education bureaucracy. Complicity because higher education is a broken system catered to the capitalist class, deeply in league with their demands.
The risk is developing generations of new laborers that are no longer functionally literate, which is required for participating in society at large and challenging it: opening bank accounts, reading ingredients of food products, understanding medication or technical instructions, signing contracts, etc. It puts the underclass at risk of being functionally illiterate, making them more reliant on the upper class that controls the models and means of communication.
This is one reason why the AI monopoly is aggressively targeting education. It’s to produce a functionally illiterate underclass. If you’re functionally illiterate, you are both less able to comprehend critical literature, but also less able to express yourself and your experiences. You will be less able to comprehend things like job contracts, work policy, and labor laws without assistance. You’ll be preconditioned to accept the status quo, since your capacity to understand your conditions and challenge them will be stunted.
The other reason is the privatization of education. These partnerships will be training the next generation of “ai educators” rife with capitalist white wash, ready to “replace” teachers and then point to the poor outcome of public education (on the back of their tools) to push privatization laws and public private partnerships that benefit the AI monopoly.
None of this changes the tension that is the way the machine (ai) impacts the laborer. The free access to these tools will build a dependency on them as they are more and more integrated into our means of communication. It diminishes laborers ability to independently express themselves, which makes them more likely to use the machine, which further diminishes their ability to express themselves. It starts as an attempt at being more efficient, but becomes a dependency as it diminishes previous levels of efficiency. This was true of the cotten gin and will be the same with ai. The obvious difference is that you are not spinning cotton as a means of interpersonal communication to navigate every day life, compared to reading, writing, orating, using language to navigate your every day life.
Weird how I’ve been using AI tools for over two years now and haven’t become functionally illiterate nor have I forgotten how to write code. The education system will certainly need to adapt to developments of new technology as it always has in the past. Your thesis would also suggest that CPC doesn’t understand how material dialectic work given that China is embracing AI at all levels of society. Seems to me that you’re just creating a moral panic because you have personal biases against this new technology.
Your personal experience isn’t representative of the systemic reality. You were educated prior to the implementation of AI, and seem to not be interested in even positing what impact unfettered access to it will have over the lifetime of a student from early grades to collage level. “The education system will certainly need to adapt to developments of new technology as it always has in the past.” Is such a empty platitude. LLMs strike at the rot inside the education system, and effectively “solve” it for all the metrics that matter for progressing to graduation for both primary and secondary education. It would take a fundamental restructuring of education coupled with a principled and aggressive approach to combating the negative impact AI systems will have on early learners.
The level of applied Marxist theory in China is debatable, and their economic activities lend themselves more towards the realization of Keynesian economics then anything. There has recently been a push to build more educational support for Marxism in China but for decades many economists in China were getting their education from American institutions. All that said, they are still managing the contradictions of capitalism better then any other nation. They are still being squeezed by external capitalist forces and their national capitalist class should always be held as suspect, since their is still opportunity for counter revolution in China. Regardless of my personal perspective on China, the creation of AI in China is still a creation of the capitalist class in China, and its implementation in their enterprises will be very different then the CPCs implementation in “all levels of society”. Last I heard they were implementing it in “all levels of government”, maybe that’s changed.
Regardless, you historically take a very uncritical view of AI, and I’m not sure if that’s because you are justifying your own personal consumption of the technology or simply holding an accelerationist perspective on the matter. What I am sure of, however, is this this conversation is going to be fruitless for both of us. I’ve made my position clear I think, and so have you.
Your assertions aren’t representative of systemic reality either. I’m very much interested in having a rational discussion about how this technology will be used and how it will impact society. However, claiming that it’s going to lead to people not being able to use language is not that.
Yes, it will take fundamental restructuring of the education system because simply memorizing trivia is no longer a valuable skill.
It’s incredible that managed to convince yourself that you understand socialism better than people who are actually building a socialist society.
About as much opportunity as there is for pigs to sprout wings an fly.
The reality of China is that the capitalist class is subordinate to the socialist state, and activities which the state sees as being harmful to society are shut down with prejudice. A great example of this is how DeepSeek was born. The company originally focused on quant trading and the government decided it was destabilizing the economy, so the whole industry was shut down forcing the company to pivot. If AI was seen as harmful by CPC, then the exact same thing would happen.
Yet, we see the exact opposite with AI being integrated in government services, education, healthcare, and industry. It’s also quite telling that majority of people in China see this technology in a positive light as opposed to people living under western regimes. You just hand wave this incontinent fact away because it doesn’t fit your doomsday narrative.
By take uncritical view of AI you mean I take a rational view of this technology as being a new tool that we must learn to integrate into society. I completely agree that this discussion is going to be as pointless as every other discussion we’ve had previously on the subject.