The great David Harvey, in a recent conversation with Doug Henwood, on AI in a capitalist society.
"I'm always being asked about artificial intelligence and my answer is I have no idea what it's going to end up doing. But I can tell you one thing, every major innovation that has come in the history of capital, we think of transport, communications and all the rest of it. Every single thing has had [the potential of] good benevolent and and actually even socialistic utilization and it also has had the opposite, that is, it can be used to support capital accumulation. But every one of them historically that has been used has ended up supporting capital accumulation.
Artificial intelligence can make life very easy for all of us. We could all be sit back and have robots clean out the ashes of the fireplace. But it's unlikely to do that. In fact, it's going to be deployed by the prevailing class forces. And the prevailing class force right now is not very happy about the idea of any mass utilization of artificial intelligence for purposes of greater economic equality and the like. In fact, it's going to likely to be the other way around.
So that neoliberalism, which was very much about the reconstruction of the capitalist class and increasing centralization of capital in class form, that's not gone away and it's likely to utilize the new technologies in ways which are advantageous to it rather than advantageous to us."
https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S260205
felix stalder
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2026-02-24 15:34:29 UTC
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2026-02-24 15:34:29 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "The great David Harvey, in a recent conversation with Doug Henwood, on AI in a capitalist society.\n\n\"I'm always being asked about artificial intelligence and my answer is I have no idea what it's going to end up doing. But I can tell you one thing, every major innovation that has come in the history of capital, we think of transport, communications and all the rest of it. Every single thing has had [the potential of] good benevolent and and actually even socialistic utilization and it also has had the opposite, that is, it can be used to support capital accumulation. But every one of them historically that has been used has ended up supporting capital accumulation. \n\nArtificial intelligence can make life very easy for all of us. We could all be sit back and have robots clean out the ashes of the fireplace. But it's unlikely to do that. In fact, it's going to be deployed by the prevailing class forces. And the prevailing class force right now is not very happy about the idea of any mass utilization of artificial intelligence for purposes of greater economic equality and the like. In fact, it's going to likely to be the other way around. \n\nSo that neoliberalism, which was very much about the reconstruction of the capitalist class and increasing centralization of capital in class form, that's not gone away and it's likely to utilize the new technologies in ways which are advantageous to it rather than advantageous to us.\"\n\nhttps://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S260205",
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