Yeah, honestly I will have to think about this a bit more and try to engage with others to see how to proceed. I talked with some of the organizers behind Safe AI Philippines about field building, and it definitely is difficult to get folks to engage given how new it all is.

I’m also going to look at some of the other organizations like All Tech Is Human to see how they do it as well, and maybe reach out to some of the organizations that do research in political economy in general, and see if they would be interested in doing work in AI’s relationship to political economy.

Yeah I guess I didn’t quite think about EFF but I guess there are definitely some things to learn from them. I always was under the impression that they were more libertarian than anything regardless if it meant libertarian left or libertarian right, but ultimately any move towards decentralized networks makes it easier for us to organize (as in more independence from big tech, not necessarily a bunch of disparate platforms)

I was honestly hoping to get a lot of people interested in AI safety and radicalize them that way or find like minded people to join. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the AI safety community, but from my understanding there is a LOT of potential for radicalization. The amount of times that people independently come to the conclusion that the profit motive is a big barrier is honestly quite pleasantly surprising from normies. However, they just can’t find a solution since they can’t see past capitalism. I still consider myself a baby ML in a lot of ways, but talking to people who spin their wheels around trying to make capitalism and safe AI compatible has only made me even more convinced that socialism is the right answer.

Honestly if you have ideas in getting others on the left to be more on board, I’m all ears! I think we have one of the most opportune moments to positively influence what is likely to be the most influential technology in this generation. Even if we can just get minor concessions from the ruling class, that would be more than worth it. We don’t even need to start that big, just something like a reading or discussion group or something for now

I honestly never thought of it that way before, but now that you say it, it definitely makes a lot of sense why controlling the communication means is so critical for class rule.

I’ve heard that China is developing 6G technology and that it is ahead of US and Western development, so it would be interesting how that changes the class power dynamic globally. Maybe that’s why there was the whole 5G Huawei scare in Europe in 2020 or whatever. It also situates the entire DPRK internet thing too. I’ll definitely have to think about this whole thing about controlling the means of communication more though.

I guess my relative lack of knowledge in this area is a bit reason why I left the section on communication somewhat vague as opposed to suggesting specific providers

Thank you! It would be interesting to see how a socialist AI differs from a capitalist AI

Yeah, I’m hoping that there are some out there. Right now there are a lot of disparate organizations with their local focus on AI safety (AI safety Africa, Safe AI Philippines, etc.) that I can think of the top of my head, but nothing that encompasses a principled anti imperialist left perspective to my knowledge.

The World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO) is an interesting start, but that is at the level of nation states and it is not explicitly anti imperialist in nature, but it would be super cool to have some cooperation as it is better than nothing lol

Thank you! I’ve not heard of Xnet but it looks cool from a quick scan of its website.

I admittedly have not thought that much about the question of freedom of speech under a communist framework, so I don’t want to make too many comments on it (no investigation, no right to speak type of thing). If you could explain a bit more your stance on the issue, that’d be helpful.

That said, I am a bit confused about your comment on not using the Internet and other modes of communication. My kneejerk reaction is that it’s not something that can be realistically ‘solved’ or whatever. Take personal precautions I guess? If you wouldn’t mind clarifying what you mean a bit more here, maybe I could give a better response?