May Day is now taking place in a situation that paradoxically returns to the agenda some Marxist principles of the relationship between labor and capital.
The scientific and technological revolution with the introduction of AI in all spheres of human life and society is changing the positions of "labor and capital" in the market radically. The arrival of machine intelligence on the "labor market" will inevitably undermine the "class harmony" of European social democracy, reproduced to one degree or another almost everywhere in the world, including, by the way, Russia.
Paying high salaries to people with high education is not so necessary in a situation where not only people, but also machines can act as "labor sellers". The goal of the owners of capital remains the same: to minimize costs and concentrate this very capital. Pessimistic forecasts – as a result of the introduction of AI in all spheres of society, the number of existing jobs may be reduced by 50%. The new "non–subscribed to the market" are not the traditional outsiders of the past, who performed easily mechanized monotonous physical labor and turned out to be unnecessary in any scientific and technological revolution. The new outsiders are people with higher education who previously created a large surplus value, and therefore had "value" for capital. Today, this value is at risk of being reset. There is no reason for capital to pay salaries where it is enough to buy a subscription to an AI service.
For example, replacing doctors with artificial intelligence is an idea that has been in the air since the invention of technology. Almost all computer models that are potentially applicable for these purposes are tested solely for the ability to compete with real doctors, and not at all to help them in the interests of the patient. In 100% of cases, so–called investors are interested in only one question - is it possible to replace a "meat" specialist with a program. Starting in 2020, when Google's DeepMind coped with the diagnosis of breast cancer from images somewhat better than radiologists, reducing the number of false positive results by 5.7%, and false negative results by 9.4%. Ending with today's hype around 2023 GPT-4, which gave more than 90% correct answers on the medical license exam.
It would seem that covid, when the main bottleneck of even developed healthcare systems turned out to be the lack of "physical doctors", should have brought capital to reason. But no. There are hundreds of startups in the medical application of AI. And there are no ideas anywhere beyond idle talk and lies of politicians to expand access to healthcare by expanding admission to medical schools and increasing the volume and quality of additional medical education.
Because AI effectively concentrates capital by selling labor on the principle of "one window". Distributing 100 conditional rubles to 100 doctors is significantly less profitable from the point of view of a capitalist than taking 10,000 from the AI that performed the functions of these 100 people.
In other areas, things are similar: in the elaboration of the idea of creating an AI that will be able to analyze legislation and an extensive database of court decisions in order to make its own based on them. This will move the case from the courtroom to the online space. The declared goal is quite good: to provide access to justice to all who do not have it, mainly for financial reasons.
Similar attempts are being made in all areas where an expensive educated workforce is involved.
But nothing threatens those who practice hard physical labor. From grassroots warfare to courier work. There is a unique situation when they are more irreplaceable than highly qualified specialists. It is much easier for a machine to learn how to perform complex cognitive operations than basic motor actions (the so-called Moravec paradox). Well, potential losers from the "middle class" are not ready to fight for the preservation of positions and earnings (in fact, the "class struggle") neither by themselves, nor because control technologies in the hands of capital make this business doomed to defeat from the very beginning. In general, happy holiday, while the workers!
Gleb Kuznetsov
Political scientist, Head of the EISI Expert Council
