Did Marx write anything about supporting/critiquing AI? If so, did his inkpen choose the words or did he do it himself?

Not AI specifically, but automation in general, yes.

If the capitalist use of machines creates powerful new incentives to heedlessly extend the workday while, at the same time, revolutionizing both how labor is performed and the character of the social organism of labor in such a way as to break the resistance to capital’s tendency to do precisely that—extend the workday—this use of machines also produces an excess population of workers who have no choice but to let capital set all the terms, something due partly to the fact that capital gains access to members of the working class who had previously been off limits, and partly to the fact that other workers made superfluous by machines are let go.70 Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry: machines clear away all traditional and natural limits to the workday. Hence, too, the economic paradox that the most powerful device for shortening labor-time turns into the surest means of transforming the whole lives of a worker and his family into disposable labor-time used to valorize capital. “If,” dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of Antiquity, “each of the instruments were able to perform its function on command or by anticipation, as they assert those of Daedalus did, or the tripods of Hephaestus (which the poet says “of their own accord came to the gods’ gathering”), so that shuttles would weave themselves and picks play the lyre, master craftsmen would no longer have a need for subordinates, or masters for slaves.”71 Antipater, a Greek poet from Cicero’s time, embraced the invention of the waterwheel that grinds wheat, that most basic form of productive machinery, hailing it as a freer of female slaves and creator of a new golden age!72 “Heathens, oh, heathens!” As clever Bastiat discovered, and as MacCulloch, who was even smarter, had figured out before him, these heathens understood nothing of political economy and Christianity. They failed to see, for example, that a machine is the best way to extend the workday. Moreover, while they may have justified enslaving one person in order to enable another to reach his full human potential, they lacked the right, specifically Christian organ needed to preach that the masses should be enslaved in order to allow a few vulgar or half-educated parvenus to become “eminent spinners,” “extensive sausage makers,” and “influential shoe black dealers.”vii

Capital, Volume I, Reitter translation.

Essentially, automation in general, under capitalism, will exclusively be used by the bourgeoisie to extend extraction from the working class.

As for your second question, tools cannot think, and that includes AI. AI is just a tool that spits out outputs based on training and prompting, whether the user accepts them or not, how they prompt it, how its trained, etc isn't something AI itself actually knows or cares about, because it can't. Markov chains aren't intelligence, just like pens aren't.

72 comments

Not AI specifically, but automation in general, yes.
If the capitalist use of machines creates powerful new incentives to heedlessly extend the workday while, at the same time, revolutionizing both how labor is performed and the character of the social organism of labor in such a way as to break the resistance to capital’s tendency to do precisely that—extend the workday—this use of machines also produces an excess population of workers who have no choice but to let capital set all the terms, something due partly to the fact that capital gains access to members of the working class who had previously been off limits, and partly to the fact that other workers made superfluous by machines are let go.70 Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry: machines clear away all traditional and natural limits to the workday. Hence, too, the economic paradox that the most powerful device for shortening labor-time turns into the surest means of transforming the whole lives of a worker and his family into disposable labor-time used to valorize capital. “If,” dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of Antiquity, “each of the instruments were able to perform its function on command or by anticipation, as they assert those of Daedalus did, or the tripods of Hephaestus (which the poet says “of their own accord came to the gods’ gathering”), so that shuttles would weave themselves and picks play the lyre, master craftsmen would no longer have a need for subordinates, or masters for slaves.”71 Antipater, a Greek poet from Cicero’s time, embraced the invention of the waterwheel that grinds wheat, that most basic form of productive machinery, hailing it as a freer of female slaves and creator of a new golden age!72 “Heathens, oh, heathens!” As clever Bastiat discovered, and as MacCulloch, who was even smarter, had figured out before him, these heathens understood nothing of political economy and Christianity. They failed to see, for example, that a machine is the best way to extend the workday. Moreover, while they may have justified enslaving one person in order to enable another to reach his full human potential, they lacked the right, specifically Christian organ needed to preach that the masses should be enslaved in order to allow a few vulgar or half-educated parvenus to become “eminent spinners,” “extensive sausage makers,” and “influential shoe black dealers.”vii
Capital, Volume I, Reitter translation.
Essentially, automation in general, under capitalism, will exclusively be used by the bourgeoisie to extend extraction from the working class.
As for your second question, tools cannot think, and that includes AI. AI is just a tool that spits out outputs based on training and prompting, whether the user accepts them or not, how they prompt it, how its trained, etc isn't something AI itself actually knows or cares about, because it can't. Markov chains aren't intelligence, just like pens aren't.
- Which chatbot gave you this answer lol
  
  Are you calling Karl Marx a chatbot, or me?
  
  It's called a book.
I asked Claude to summarise The Communist Manifesto and it said to go see the James Bond movie Spectre.
It was a good flick but I think maybe I missed out on some of the finer points of what Marx & Engels were trying to say
- But you got to see Monica Bellucci's bedroom eyes, which were sorely lacking in the Manifesto.
  
  Maybe she is who Marx was alluding to in his 1989 hit single "Right Here Waiting" 😍