ai: cultural impacts and impediments to the post–labor
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AI: Cultural Impacts and Impediments�to the Post–Labor Society �
Michael Betancourt
Aspen Institute—Germany, Third Annual Berlin AI Conference December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
I am going to discuss insights into AI derived �from my analytic work with digital capitalism.�
��
This talk is a summary of my book Force Magnifier.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
This talk will discuss seven aspects of AI linked to class distinctions:����[a] Human labor (determinative judgment) ceases to be the foundation of value. ��[b] The model for value production with reflective judgment (design) is fundamentally performative, and so is resistant to automation and increased efficiencies due to both the nature of art/design itself and the socio-cultural role it plays. ��[c] Currency becomes a title to initiate production, rather than a receipt for past production. ��[d] The role of cultural authority held by ‘gate keepers’ increases.��
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
����[e] The cycle of wages::profits requires social maintenance, as with other elements of the material infrastructure.��[f] The means of production becomes a commodity in itself. ��[g] Traditional cultural ideologies are structural impedimenta to the transition and emergence of a ‘society of leisure’ through their demonization of inactivity, and justification of the historical societal hierarchy that emerged in an agrarian, infopoor society dominated by sustenance production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
What does AI automate?��
Human agency is the simple answer.���
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Not all forms of human agency have �the same cultural importance.�
�and��
Not all forms of AI are useful in production,� nor act to displace human agency.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Distinguishing roles for human agency� is a concern of Kantian philosophy:�
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Determinative Judgment�Reflective Judgment�
��
Kant’s distinctions in qualia for human agency�reflects how that type of agency is valued.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
DETERMINATIVE JUDGMENT���
Decisions made by following the application of a specific,�a priori rule to achieve a predetermined outcome.�
�This type of human agency is typical of labor�
and is not valued significantly in Kant’s proposal.��
The assembly line (Taylorism) is concerned with �minimizing the role of this type of agency in production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT���
Decisions made by inventing a new rule to achieve an outcome�that is novel or otherwise outside established knowledge. �
�This type of human agency is reserved for the �
management of labor, and is highly valued in Kant’s proposal.��
Creative activity is identical to this type of agency.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
AI automates decisions made within carefully predefined rules� (Determinative Judgment).�
�This is what ‘machine learning’ derives and employs:�
the matching of an immanent encounter� to a carefully defined past situation.�
�While it might generate novel recognitions and identifications�
these “discoveries” are implicit in the rules AI uses to produce them.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[AlphaZero] doesn’t play like a human, and it doesn’t play like a program. �It plays in a third, almost alien, way.�
�— Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind, 2017
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The ‘aura of the digital’ enables a fantasy where� the impacts of technology are separated from�
the material operations and requirements of digital technology,�hiding its social dimensions and costs.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Post-labor arises as an affect of this ‘aura of the digital’: ��
the illusion that the digital is a self-productive domain� capable of creating value without expenditure�
separates the physical aspects of production from�their implementation and social impacts.�
�The assumption that AI means there will be no more�
human labor is a reflection of this fantasy.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
What is the ‘society of leisure’?��
This concept is a description of those social�relations emergent with the replacement of�rote human labor with AI and automation.�
�It does not mean a cessation of work, �
but rather a change in the kinds of demands �made on labor and the necessity of that labor.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[a] Human labor (determinative judgment) ceases to be the foundation of value. ���Wealth, currency, commodity distribution are all linked as�proxies for class distinctions rendered literal through the�differentials of labor and the valuations of agency.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
In capitalism all value ultimately reduces to human agency.��
Without human action, there is no value produced, distributed, or exchanged.���
This relationship is the historical definition of capitalism:�the exchange of human productive activity as a commodity in itself.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Historically labor has been understood as �unskilled, unintelligent, and only minimally educated. �
�These assumptions are deeply embedded�
in capitalism, even though the actual conditions of labor�and nature of work performed have changed.�
�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Child Laborer in North Carolina photographed by Lewis Hine in 1908.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
(1) Productive Labor is Determinative Judgment��(2) Managerial Control is Reflective Judgment
What AI reveals is that much “administrative” labor �is actually a matter of determinative judgment.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
There are two general categories of labor �being performed in capitalism:�
The managerial fantasy of total control over production� becomes reified in AI as the direct translation of �
Reflective Judgment into productive action without�the intervening interpretations of labor.�
��
This transformation is an accentuation of Taylorist�assembly line fragmentation begun in the 20th century.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The shift in the basis of value that AI suggests is a rupture with �the historical system of capitalism and its productive system.�
��
In capitalism, currency provides a medium of exchange that is linked�directly to the conversion of human agency into a commodity:�
�what is exchanged is a receipt for past labor performed that�
allows the distribution of commodity production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Without human labor as basis exchanges become meaningless, �as well as disruptive of the cycle of wages::profits.�
�By replacing human labor, AI begins a process of shifting the nature�
of value away from past production and towards futurity��
instead of being a title to past production,� currency becomes the right to initiate production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[b] The model for value production with reflective judgment (design) is fundamentally performative, and so is resistant to automation and increased efficiencies due to both the nature of art/design itself and the socio-cultural role it plays.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The creative process takes place in the mind of the artist;� the final painting is only the artist’s rendition of his mental image.�
�—computer artist A. Michael Noll, 1967
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Bart Korsten, The Next Rembrandt, computer generated painting, 2016
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The model for value production via �Reflective Judgment (design) is performative,�
and so is functionally resistant to automation and� the increased efficiencies due to both the nature of art/design itself�
and the socio-cultural role it plays. �
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
One Reflective Judgment is not equivalent to another:��
Creative solutions are not interchangeable.��
One cannot substitute a painting by Theo Van Gogh�for a different painting by his brother, Vincent,�
and expect them to be equivalent.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Robbie Barret, AI Nude 01, 2018
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Reflective judgments are subject to Baumol’s Cost Disease:��
the generative production of “creative” works�remains dependent on the human selection of the result�
which constrains the capacity of profit generation.��
The “Monkey selfie” provides an interesting example for�considering the role of human agency in autonomous production.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
“Selfie” selected by nature photographer David Slater, 2011.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[c] Currency becomes a title to initiate production, rather than a receipt for past production. ��
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Access to commodities (distribution) is�and always has been�
a signifier of class position. ��
The democratic aspects of mass production�are being attenuated by the shift �
to bespoke and on-demand production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Wealth is a proxy for class.��
Commodity access is a proxy for class.��
Changes in the nature of currency do not disrupt,�but accentuate existing class structures.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Currency acts in capitalist societies as a �mechanism controlling commodity distribution.�
�The post-labor economy replaces human labor with the unpaid�operations of digital computers, eliminating the costs of wages.�
�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
This replacement of human labor with AI is an example� of how the aura of the digital enables the fantasy that�
an infinite amount of wealth can be� extracted from a finite resource, �
suggesting magical production without consumption.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[d] The role of cultural authority held by ‘gate keepers’ increases.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Microsoft Windows operating system error message from 2013.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The idea of a pluralistic, horizontal mass communications system �challenges the stability of the dominant political and ideological power�
in any given society.��
—video artist Francesc Torres, 1990
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The internet and social media are �horizontal communication systems.�
�What these have done is allow more people�
with more divergent viewpoints to assert themselves,� but in the process it has also revealed that the systems �distributing that information have an extraordinary level �
of influence over what information propagates.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The automation of the selection and dispersal of information �by AI systems has revealed itself to be problematic:�
�maximizing attention (value generation) is not compatible with �
maximizing social cohesion and public good��
The structural demand for profit generation �is not compatible with any other demands.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Facebook user surveys giving only limited options, March 5, 2018
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Autonomous editorial control and censorship have �become a normal feature of AI systems.�
�The problem with attempting to address this control�
is immanent: it is difficult to correct what you cannot see.��
The use of AI makes challenging these controls impossible�except through formal, legal interventions by government.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Hunter Scully, Snapchat censorship revealed on October 23, 2019.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[e] The cycle of wages::profits requires social maintenance, as with other elements of the material infrastructure.���This is not an issue of centrally planned production, but of enabled consumption that allows existing systems of distribution to continue to function.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Without wages, human labor cannot purchase commodities, �disrupting the economic cycle.�
�The proposed solution to the loss of wages is their replacement�
with “Universal Basic Income.”��
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The aura of the digital reconceives �wages paid to labor as lost profits. �
�The invention and progressive shifts to automation�
and AI enable the replacement of human labor� with the fixed cost of a machine.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The automation of “low status” jobs becomes �an immediate concern when human labor is �left completely dependent on social supports.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The automation of “high status” jobs becomes �a concern when the capacity of the middle classes�
to support the economy through consumption� is compromised by their financial insecurity.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Joseph Schumpeter observed that in capitalist societies: ��
There is an element of truth in the brutal slogan of �the typical bourgeois which many worthy men find� so irritating, viz., that those who cannot climb by�
these ladders [of success] are not worth troubling about.��
This high social dominance justifies the deprivation of all lower classes.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[f] The means of production becomes a commodity in itself. �
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The shift to on demand and ‘just-in-time’ production,�along with the elimination of standing reserves, �
are dimensions of the same process.��
The are attempts to a pathological slowing of the rate of profit.��
This elimination of stored value (production) happens because� past production is no longer source of value, �but an expense that slows the rate of profit.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
AI systems and their productive capacity (independent of human labor)�allow the bespoke production of singular commodities on demand.�
�We can already see this shift underway with the small scale�
production of “custom” products now readily available.��
This productive capacity is a new commodity that elides�the labor required to operate it in the generation of value.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Universal Basic Income (UBI)�has been proposed as a solution to�
the disruption of the cycle of wages::profits.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Consumption (thus wages) is a proxy for social position.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Gargantua by Honoré Daumier, 1832.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
�1. Income provided via direct governmental payments (financed through taxation).��2. Income provided through capital that is never repaid (grants or via periodic jubilee that abolishes debt).��3. Income provided through obligations for future repayment (debt).
Three general models for “Universal Basic Income”:�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
How to finance UBI is an issue of monetary policy, �but its implementation is not simply a question of finance.�
�The implementation of any “Universal Basic Income” �
is constrained by social factors.�
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The goal to eliminate all human labor as a necessity� is the precondition for the success of UBI.�
�The necessity arises from the social role of wealth:�
�If wealth remains a social marker for class, �
Universal Basic Income will increase social strife� and accentuate divisions within society,�
thus it will ultimately fail to preserve the social.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
[g] Traditional cultural ideologies are structural impedimenta to the transition and emergence of a ‘society of leisure’ through their demonization of inactivity, and justification of the historical societal hierarchy that emerged in an agrarian society dominated by subsistence production.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
2 Thessalonians 3��
“Those unwilling to work shall not eat.”
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The belief that labor is a necessary precondition for�survival and existence opposes easy solutions�
to the extended furlough and demobilization of labor.���
These social factors are already apparent �from the on-going impacts of Covid-19.�
�The pandemic has highlighted these problems �
via the differential national responses.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
The cultural rejection of idleness, at least for the lower classes�has a variety of secular analogues to the religious demand, evident in the �
limitations on providing social support for the poor and unemployed, �or imposing conditions on that support. �
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
Lessons from the Pandemic:��
Automation has not solved our problems.��
Social class remains a primary dimension of labor.��
It takes very little to destabilize society.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
There is no easy or simply solution to these challenges since �they emerge from deep foundations of social organization,�developed during another period when conditions were�
radically different from what confronts us today.���
Changing these entrenched values is a precondition to �addressing the challenges posed by AI and automation.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
For any short term solutions to successfully resolve �the challenges and problems promised by AI,�they need to be uniformly implemented and �
have a consistent program of support and promotion�from social and religious leaders. �
�The problem posed by AI is not primarily financial, but social,�
a product of how economics, religion, and education�act in concert to affirm the existing social hierarchy.
Betancourt | AI: Cultural Impediments and Impacts | Aspen Institute—Germany, December 8, 2020 16:55 – 17:55 (CET)
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