This article puts into words a lot of things that had been on my mind as missing in AI discourse. Most significantly, actually considering the _systemic consequences_ of the promised AI future, how it interacts with political economy, an actual critical look (instead of accepting the "Western meta-narrative of modernity" at face value).
And maybe more importantly, it articulates really clearly how damaging the restructuring of the economy by AI moguls and the tightening of the capital–political feedback loop can be, even (maybe _especially_) if the returns of AI do not materialise as promised.
There is plenty of disorganised diffuse anti-AI sentiment. If intellectuals are able to get together behind a common cause, there might be a political movement in the making.
I'm not sure why we have had such different experiences, but I feel like people have been saying those things repeatedly.
Let's do it.
What policies to propose?
There are at least 4 in the article:
> The interventions that could matter are known. Public ownership stakes in AI infrastructure. Aggressive antitrust enforcement. A genuine tax regime on automated labor. Branko Milanovic’s prescription is characteristically direct: spread capital ownership more widely, tax the highest capital incomes more aggressively
Let's start with laws which mandates that copyleft in LLM inputs transfer to LLM outputs
If AI results in the abolishment of the copyright regime as we know it, at least some good will come from the wreckage of society.