Hope it's fun & useful when it makes it out of reading pile limbo! ;)

I think Leif Weatherby is trying to do something related in his Language Machines, might be relevant (personally I'm so quite unconvinced by at least his take on the transformer and I think he's strawmaning the Vienna circle et al, but I'm not that far into the book yet)

The funny thing of course is that they actually mean "privatize, commodify, and cheapen knowledge" when they're saying this about AI

(Well, at least that's what chapter 4 of our book argues)

I think that the alternative to that class alignment approach is a class confrontation one. Creating our own counter-forces to capital and its destructive forces, building broad working class coalitions.

@meredithmeredith.bsky.social made this point well, and here we cite her in our book 👇 3/3

play a certain role in directing it. Now, this shows up (as above) as the default stance even when capital produces forces that are actively undermining the professionals as AI does (it is after all, a knowledge devaluation tool). The search for power through proximity is on full display there. 2/3

All the more bizarre in cases of monopolizable stuff (like, there's only one Yankee stadium, and they control entrance & what you can bring along, of course they can increase their profit rate by making the beer expensive)

"Surely, Silicon Valley’s leaders can imagine possibilities more hopeful than demons, dictators, and damnation"

I don't think they can, I think they realize that the basis of their own power (fossil capital) is the thing that is undermining the stability of the system, and they don't want to let go

I think much of the book involves arguments about AI sharpening and perhaps even clarifying class antagonism, so I think there's room both for pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will

These are the same kind of people who yesterday were like "why do you have to make everything about race" in any context that was clearly about race, aren't they?

Oh, interesting! Thanks for the correction!

See here in the German wikipedia, for example

I assume that "Antifa Ost" is about Lina E., Maja T., and a few others who have been accused of attacking fascists in Eastern Germany (and maybe Hungary)

Antifa Ost (Antifa East) is occasionally used to talk about the trial, but that's definitely not the name of any organization

I still have two chapters left but this is an amazing book.

Thank you so much, very happy to hear that (and will pass it on to Ingeborg!)

And therefor we should be asking why some people want to sell such stories, and more importantly, why so many like to consume them. (Well, at least that's what our book argues ;) )

www.commonnotions.org/why-we-fear-ai

Getting some "it'll be a quick war" 1914 vibes here