AI as an Apparatus of Capture

You must have a heart of stone not to laugh. Hundreds of billions of dollars wiped off the value of leading US tech firms on Monday's markets as their expensive plagiarism machines, the misnamed language models trading under the name 'Artificial Intelligence', have been out done and out-performed at a fraction of the cost by the Chinese alternative, DeepSeek. Having announced untold levels of investments in new chips, new data centres, and new power stations, this vast supportive infrastructure designed to assure the dominance of Silicon Valley firms for the next century has seemingly evaporated as venture capital flees elsewhere. Egg on the face of far right oligarchs, and humiliation for Donald Trump's efforts at hitching his backward-looking project with the wave of the future.

America, the self-proclaimed home of buccaneering entrepreneurship and freedom stopped exporting advanced chips to China and showered the techbros with staggering sums. The ludicrous resources at their disposal brute-forced the pace of innovation. Think of all the money that has gone into producing applications less accurate than internet search engines, creates its own "facts" through "hallucinations", and has trouble drawing hands. A hell-for-leather effort that wanted to cement an unassailable technological lead. And that's been shown up by a network of Chinese coders using open source software, no state backing, and little but their skill and ingenuity. They have produced a better model with nowhere near the same demands on chips and energy. The tech oligarchs have got to be hoping the PhD-level language models, which according to the much-publicised rumour mill is weeks away, is more than a case of their getting high on their own supply. If not, some are looking at significant dips in their fortunes.

Yet none of this changes the fundamentals about so-called AI. It is a technology designed not to speed things up and make life easier. Like the vast majority of innovations in production, it's designed to deskill and disempower labour, forestalling the looming threat of a long-term shift in the balance of capital and labour in labour's favour. As discussed many times here, capital accumulation, particularly in the most advanced industrial countries, has become increasingly dependent on immaterial labour: the knowledge, skills, personalities, and social aptitudes. This is because capital itself is directly dependent on the production of information and relationships to sell a service of some description. However, the main force of production that counts is the brain, or rather the person of the worker. And it's inherently leaky. Despite the stringencies of copyright, industrial secrets, non-disclosure agreements, whatever competencies someone builds working with one employer remains with the worker, and can be the basis for future work elsewhere - be it for other employers (competitors), their own business, or outside the economy entirely. Capital ponces off the commons and whatever is produced "leaks" back into and builds the commons, leaving capital revealed as a parasitic social relationship. Whereas previous waves of technological development have increasingly done away with the masses of people production required and, more importantly, the knowledge of production that gave labour some leverage over the capital that employed them; the creativity, the ability to produce new information and maintain relationships appeared impervious, except around the edges where repetitive tasks were concerned.

AI changes this. The tech bro dream are machines that can code the software for other machines, which to a degree is possible now. They want to be able to generate their own images and text without having to bother with human artists and writers. Or the production of films, television, and music that can do without crews, actors, and musicians. In corporate and public sector bureaucracies, it's the automation of clerical tasks and, in some cases, front-facing work involving customers and clients that promises the most, freeing up managers for "strategy". Who themselves will become increasingly replaced by "thinking" machines. Even everyday communication skills, such as how to craft an email, is now something any old AI chatbot will happily do for you. What only a few short years ago was temporarily "captured" to generate surplus value is in the process of becoming absorbed into itself as 21st century fixed capital. AI might seem convenient, but it's first and foremost there at capital's convenience.

Opposition to so-called AI is not reactionary, or anti-technology. It is a healthy response to a power grab that will result in a privately-owned monopoly over creativity. This means, ultimately, to put hundreds of millions out of work globally and secure capital against its dependence on the intellectuality and sociality of human beings. These bots are "trained" by "reading" the sum total of our species' cultural output without any recompense whatsoever. What is presently ours becomes theirs, with the possibility of our common heritage being reduced to regurgitated AI slop that becomes a cultural staple, and one owned by the firms who end up winning the AI race. The loss of, the possibility of the privatisation of social competencies is real. Therefore, the rapid rise of DeepSeek and the humbling of the USA's richest companies, while funny, does not change the dynamics of the situation at all. Because this is capitalism, AI is more than a toy and a liberator of free time: it's the latest, and possibly the most complete means of capturing and imprisoning the soul.