When Musk meets Marx: It's Murx
Understanding AI, the future of work, and the relationship between "meaning" and violence.
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Recently, Elon Musk answered a series of questions at a packed audience at VivaTech in Paris. I don’t often spend my time looking at what Elon has to say. I have other fish to fry in my daily life. However, it being a Sunday morning, my chores almost complete, I saw that he had said something rather puzzling, and I wanted to double check. I had the time, so why not see *exactly* what he said because a lot of the time people are taken out of context. I’m a fair gal, after all.
The quote that got me to watch this tête-à-tête was this:
“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job. There would be universal high income. […] There would be no shortage of goods and services. […] The question will really become one of meaning: if a computer can do, and the robots can do, everything better than you, does your life have meaning? I do think there’s perhaps still a role for humans in the two may give AI meaning.”
Ok, I’ve seen/heard all sorts of things about universal basic income, now universal high income, and even Musk’s discussions about why we need to colonize other planets so that we can perpetuate human “consciousness” beyond Earth’s planetary boundaries. There are lots of things that I find odd to say the least. I’m not so certain on the value of perpetuating consciousness without a fleshy host. I mean, he does consider “humanity” i.e., us fleshy complicated and often not very nice beings, as “bootloaders” for super intelligence. I mean, if that isn’t a bit of a tell, I don’t know what is. He thinks we need “biology” to get to “silicon” and thus we are the necessary things to get to artificial super intelligence (ASI).
«Which, if you really take these two propositions together - that 1) we need to find some way to perpetuate “consciousness,” where it appears conscisousness has some intrinsic value, but 2) we also need humans (who have that consciousness) to be bootloaders for ASI (which I’m assuming he also ipso facto holds has consciousness), then the humans by themselves are not intrinsically valuable. They are things, despite the fact that they too have this intrinsically valuable quality. I can’t wrap my head around the logic of saying a being is intrinsically valuable because it has a property (consciousness), while simultaneously saying let’s treat this being as a thing (i.e., not having intrinsic value) to get to some other state where that property is spread out by another form of being. But that’s me, a Kantian. If humans are intrinsically valuable because of their consciousness, then you can’t use them as things (bootloaders) for some other thing (ASI), period. But I also don’t think Musk is a Kantian, so there is that. I see him as much more of a Utilitarian, so if we have more of something (i.e. consciousness) however we get there is not an issue.»
I’m not going to get into a debate about the philosophical merits or demerits of such an argument here. I’m guessing you’ll see what side I would argue… but that’s not why I wanted to write today.
Nope, I wanted to take issue with his meandering about “benign” outcomes. I’m not going to take issue with whether we need Universal Basic Income or Universal High Income. That seems to me to dither about decimals. Nope, I wanted to question this assumption about meaning.
Now, it is no secret that I have spent much of my career thinking about war and weapons. I think about it from a philosophical point of view, an operational perspective, and even organizationally. Which is why, my question may not be surprising. But one, that once I thought it, I can’t shake. When it comes to the question of meaning: where does violence go? You will see why this duality of meaning/violence is important, I hope, as you read. But keep it in mind.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the utopia that Musk is envisioning is one where since everyone’s needs are met, things are at least minimally orderly. He talks a lot about goods and services, so there is some form of distribution that everyone seems to be at least minimally approving. OK. He briefly ponders on how then humans will find “meaning” (once they don’t have to work) - but stops pondering on this pretty quickly to switch it to the opposite conclusion that we humans will give AI meaning. Weird. But unsurprising given our discussant.
«Look, I’m not going to take a lot of punches at Musk. I’m just going to use his brief comments as a foil for a lot of the thinking that goes on in Silicon Valley and those academics that circle it.»
The trouble though, is that humans are more than just consumers of goods and services. What he is alluding to is that humans are also defined in some way by what they produce - i.e., their labor or more contemporarily, their jobs. They find meaning in their work. Or if you are a fan of Marx, you’d say that they are defined by their labor given this epoch of Capitalism.
But, if you don’t want to go full Marxist on our labor being that which gives us meaning, we could say more generally that this pesky brain of ours finds all sorts of meaning in other activities and relationships. Those activities and relationships give rise to all sorts of emotions, perceptions, needs, wants, and the like. OR, if you follow someone like Rousseau, you would say the there is a part of human nature that is necessarily comparative and maybe competitive (Amor Propre). In other words, we can’t help but compare ourselves to others. We can call this the Jones’ Principle, whereby people will want to “keep up with the Jones’”.
This comparison tends to be rather unhealthy, according to Rousseau, unless properly educated and inculcated. It leads to, you guessed it - violence, conflict, strife, etc.
Now, violence tends to raise its head for a myriad of reasons. We can say there are reasons for people to be violent because of scarcity, fear, protection of oneself or others, needing to feel powerful over others, justifications to maintain “law and “order,” boredom, or just plain old psychopaths that enjoy violence for whatever reason. Then there is organized violence - i.e., war. War as Clausewitz would say is “politics by other means” meaning that this is just an extension of collective will or action, and in this analogy of the collective to the interpersonal/individual, the reasons for violence are very similar if not the same. Or, if you are a student of Marx, violence is just the condition under which you live, until you usher in a communist utopia (more later). All sorts of philosophical bets you can make here.
So, in this Muskian “benign” future, humans need to find meaning, because they don’t have to do anything. They no longer find meaning in their work (or labor, if you will) cause’ they don’t have to. There is a lurking assumption here that this ‘benign’ future is a peaceful one. Without want or need, no one commits crime, states don’t go to war, and perhaps there is no violence. But that really is a *huge* assumption to make. It isn’t a unique assumption by the way. This is *exactly* the economic and political theory of Karl Marx. Hate to break it to y’all… but this entire “let the robots and AI solve it for us” is all a utopian communist version by (ta da!) Marx.
Let’s take a Marxist detour:
“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” - (The German Ideology)
Now, for Marx, this meaning/violence paradox is resolved. It is resolved because this communist society is utopia! Meaning is not derived through our labor any more, but through some actualization of human freedom. Your value is not determined by what you do or provide. Violence is eliminated because to date, violence has been about power struggles and class warfare. Eliminate that, voi la! No violence. Unfortunately, we’ve never experienced this, so for Marx it’s gamble if he’s right (Given his materialist history can’t provide evidence that his prognostication is correct.)
The reason we get to this utopia is through different revolutions or “epochs” in history. The most recent, i.e. capitalism, is one where the owners of capital (the bourgeois) innovate and create “machines” and “machinery” to replace the labor of human workers so that they may maximize their profits. (Sound familiar?)
For Marx, the situation becomes so dire because wages become so depressed, or jobs completely eliminated, and machines become capable of general tasks that general workers can do. This is because, he thinks, skilled labor is ultimately divided into smaller tasks that can be mechanized. (There is a lot of his theory here on the alienation of one’s labor from oneself, and the alienation of what one produces, etc. If you are intrigued by this but hate reading Marx, I suggest reading Hannah Arendt’s amazing work The Human Condition). When there is so much misery, unemployment, poverty, etc. the masses of the proletariat will rise up against the bourgeois class. They will win this revolution because there are more of them. They will take over the “state,” and the “government” will really just be about functional administration. In short, for this to take place, humans (and their labor) need replacing by technology.
Hence for Marx, technology is the handmaiden to the necessary global —very violent and bloody—REVOLUTION that overthrows capitalism and ushers in the pacific and utopic communist society. (After a period of dictatorship, oddly.). Thus the machinery and the technology developed under capitalism has reached such a pinnacle that the robots will be washing up and doing everything for you. So you can hunt, fish, or philosophize as you see fit.
Yet, we have lots of arguments against Marx over the years. But there seems to be something rather odd about Musk (and a lot of others like him). The trouble for these new AI/robot/tech moguls and really anyone espousing this version of the future is the SAME problem that faced Marx:
What empirical evidence does one have to assume that violence will go away? For Marx, the objection is that humans have in essence lived under systems of violence for their entire history, and after this violent revolution there will be an equally questionable dictatorship, so there is a leap in logic to how you get to a peaceful utopia. For the techno-pseudeo-Marxists (who, bizarrely are the bourgeois), it seems an assumption with no grounds that society will just be lovely, don’t worry, even though they are creating the very seeds of potential misery.
One may object and say, look, Roff, we don’t have to follow Marx to the letter. We could have some agreement between these vastly rich multinational corporations AND the governments of states to come together in some gloriously beneficent way to provide for all their peoples. Ok, so we say enlightened statesmen and CEOs do all this with no war. No violence. (That way you get away from the objections to Marx about how to stop people from being violent one day to the next (e.g., last day of horrific violent revolution, first day of peace)), and you use some form of democracy, or socialism, or whatever.
I’m not so certain that this is actually possible. The history of the world (not necessarily Marx’s history) isn’t one of a lot of Kumbaya. But…
If you can swallow that assumption, it doesn’t address another lesson from our collective political thought: bored individuals (usually young ones) with nothing to do, tend to get into trouble. This can be traced to (amongst many) St. Thomas More’s discussion of the “problem of retainers.” Those “idle men” that go around engaging in harassment, violence, etc. Sure, for More, the “retainers” were mercenaries or soldiers of fortune that didn’t have any wars to fight and so were home, armed, and bored. But, it still gets to the crux of the argument about youth and boredom. Many political analysts look around the world for “youth bulges” and see patterns of conflict. Even in More’s Utopia, you had to figure out something to do with all those idle hands (even if they didn’t have swords in them).
But what if it isn’t that you need work to be able to have meaning or to keep you from just being a delinquent. What if, you can’t take away human predilection towards violence because if someone has “meaning” in something there is always the option to use violence to protect, defend, attain, overpower, or whatever that which gives you meaning?
So I am just not buying what anyone is selling about these utopic futures where we are paid off to some extent and all is well. Culture, belief systems, religion, or sometimes just plain old desire for power (often times as a result of fear), are enough to tip the scales from peace to violence. I have lots to say about violence and patriarchy, but will save it for another day too. But, something that seems to be lost on folks who spend their time thinking about how many standard deviations they need to accept some claim as “probably true,” is that when people *have meaning* in their lives, they want to perpetuate it and protect it. So, if you have folks with meaning in their lives, then you have folks who can elect to be violent. The rise of technology isn’t a savior, and the guarantee of goods and services isn’t going to guarantee a “benign” future. It isn’t even detailed enough to discuss questions of distribution, where we could have *some* guiding principle like “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (see Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program). Rather, these blasé (but frequent) admissions by the tech elite about UBI or UHI just seem a rather poor reworking of Marx’s arguments (in not just the Communist Manifesto, but most of his works).
The irony, too, is that either a) these folks who run these massively huge companies with revenues outpacing entire countries’ GDPs are Marxist in leaning…. in which case they are creating the seeds of their own destruction, or b) …. they are just doing what Marx would justifiably claim they are going to do - lie to you to keep you buying and working. The opiate of the masses may not be religion, it may be the very technology that is blinding anyone to critical discussions about how technology - and AI especially - is affecting our lives. (Hey! Can your iPhone “circle it”? No? Buy this other phone… ). If this minimally future “benign” condition comes to being, through the use of UHI and the society is minimally orderly with minimally acceptance of the distribution scheme, this in no way guarantees peace or a lack of violence.
In Marx’s communist utopia there is no violence. In *any* version of utopia there is no violence, no war. I think that is pretty much a precondition for it to be utopia. But I tend to think that this is what Kant would call a “pious wish.” Humans are not suddenly going to stop reserving the right to use violence, no matter how much you pay them or how many goods you distribute. If they get *meaning* from any thing — or anyone — then that is a source of potential strife. That is in and of itself a paradox that we have not resolved and may never resolve.
If you think I’m just creating straw men for arguments, let me tell you about Plato’s Republic. Now, Plato thought that to get to the ideal society —the Republic—you had to teach everyone according to virtue. But, to do this effectively, you must break the most fundamental bond upon which society is built: the family. Later Enlightenment theorists had the language of family “being the first society” (thanks Locke…). For Plato, the state had to be organized in such a way that babies would be taken from their mothers immediately after they were born and raised in common (in communal “pens” - no joke). He referred to them in a rather gross way as “breeding pens.” But the reason for this is that mothers and fathers will always have bonds to their children. Their children give them… meaning. That meaning then is stronger than bonds to the state. So, eliminate the bond, and place that devotion to the state. Pretty ick, right?
But that was Plato’s way of saying there will always be preferences, bonds, relationships, etc. that come *before* the ideal society. In that respect, he is very on pointe. There is a duality to meaning and violence. As long as that is true, then there are needs for the governance of violence. That’s right… the state is the entity that has the monopoly and (justified) violence. And so, as long as there are people that hold these relationships, there will be potentialities of violence. As long as there are states (or collectives) and not one giant one, there is the risk of violence between them. Interpersonal violence and war, respectively. If that is true, then the monopoly on the means of violence means that someone wants to build stuff… tools… weapons… etc. Thus we get, finally, to Kant’s conclusion that “Perpetual Peace” is nothing more than a graveyard, as only in death will you find it. (See Kant, Perpetual Peace)
The human condition is one that is messy but beautiful. But it is also weirdly and often predictably violent. We need to think about these things. Moreover and just as another side-note: If “consciousness” is intrinsically valuable, then work on sustaining it without violating the very holders of it. Humans are not bootloaders, and the planet that houses, sustains, and maintains us is the only thing we’ve got.
Also - hug your local political theorist. Do you know, most horrible wars are started by ideas and ideologies? Maybe it is a good idea to study those occasionally so you can smell the BS and hone your Reason. Remember McCarthy? NO? Hmm..
Note Bene: Since I was for some unknown reason booted from X (the artist formerly known as Twitter)… Musk can take a Murx or two. Go Kant!
Another great piece. Thanks Heather.
Well-written article, though I'd add that meaning is not a necessary precursor to violence - violence can give us meaning as well. Along the lines of the idle youth you mentioned, there are plenty of young folks who have joined wars in the absence of ideological motivations, either for the unifying/belonging aspects of group violence or merely for license to commit violence. Violence can also be an end in itself, a la A Clockwork Orange. So even if we completely expunge other loyalties and sources of meaning from this techno-utopia, there's no logical reason to think we'd be free of violence.