How AI Will Break Capitalism

AI is threat­en­ing to break capitalism.

OpenAI:s CEO Sam Altman is no stranger to bold statements.

“I think cap­it­al­ism is awe­some. I love cap­it­al­ism. Of all of the bad sys­tems the world has, it’s the best one — or the least bad one we found so far. I hope we find a way bet­ter one. And I think that if AGI really truly fully hap­pens, I can ima­gine all these ways that it breaks cap­it­al­ism.”
— Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI ¹Interview with Forbes: OpenAI’s Sam Altman Talks ChatGPT And How Artificial General Intelligence Can ‘Break Capitalism’

What could Altman be allud­ing to?
How could AI break capitalism?

In this blog post, I’ll sug­gest a few AI mech­an­isms that will, at the very least, force us to rethink the cur­rent mod­els of capitalism.

Here we go:

How AI Can Break Capitalism

Many experts and schol­ars are now wor­ried about the future of cap­it­al­ism. Can such a resi­li­ent sys­tem with­stand the upcom­ing AI challenges?

1. Break Supply and Demand

Supply and demand are corner­stones of cap­it­al­ism. Demand is a chal­lenge for cap­it­al­ism, since we might reach a point at which the glob­al pop­u­la­tion peaks and begins to decline. Our cur­rent mod­els of cap­it­al­ism will struggle without a nat­ur­al growth of demand.

The digit­al trans­form­a­tion, how­ever, has already dis­rup­ted the sup­ply func­tion: inform­a­tion and digit­al products can be copied end­lessly (at nearly zero pro­duc­tion cost). This has already impacted many indus­tries and enabled major tech com­pan­ies to dom­in­ate mar­kets by impos­ing arti­fi­cial scarcity.

AI will fur­ther accel­er­ate the deteri­or­a­tion of sup­ply and demand func­tions in the short term. In the long term, AI will likely change the fun­da­ment­al dynam­ics by steer­ing us toward full depend­ence on cent­ral­ised AI technology.

2. Break Wealth Distribution

Ownership of the means of pro­duc­tion has always been a cent­ral func­tion of cap­it­al­ism. This has always been the cent­ral knot of Marxist cri­tique of cap­it­al­ism: wealth accu­mu­la­tion favours the “haves” at the expense of the “have-nots.”

AI tech­no­logy is poised to fur­ther cent­ral­ise wealth by favour­ing those who can research, devel­op, and run com­plex algorithms. 

“The most moment­ous chal­lenge facing socio-eco­nom­ic sys­tems today is the arrival of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. If AI remains under the con­trol of mar­ket forces, it will inex­or­ably res­ult in a super-rich oli­go­poly of data bil­lion­aires who reap the wealth cre­ated by robots that dis­place human labor, leav­ing massive unem­ploy­ment in their wake. […] For the sake of social well-being and secur­ity, indi­vidu­als and private com­pan­ies should not be allowed to pos­sess any exclus­ive cut­ting-edge tech­no­logy or core AI plat­forms. Like nuc­le­ar and bio­chem­ic­al weapons, as long as they exist, noth­ing oth­er than a strong and stable state can ensure society’s safety. If we don’t nation­al­ize AI, we could sink into a dysto­pia remin­is­cent of the early misery of indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion, with its satan­ic mills and street urchins scroun­ging for a crust of bread.”
— Professor Feng Xiang ²Opinion piece in Washington Post: AI will spell the end of cap­it­al­ism

“Workers” will have no choice but to use AI tech­no­logy in exchange for the only thing that could allow them to share in the wealth — their user-gen­er­ated data. Those who decide to keep their per­son­al data will be out­com­peted by oth­er work­ers powered by lead­ing AI systems.

3. Break Labour Value

Owning the means of pro­duc­tion has tra­di­tion­ally been bal­anced by the pro­duc­tion system’s need for work. This has dis­trib­uted at least some of the gen­er­ated wealth and provided mil­lions of people with mean­ing­ful occupations.

“A new class of ‘use­less’ people will be formed, who will simply become irrel­ev­ant and redund­ant in the eco­nomy oper­ated by AI algorithms and robots. Their resent­ment towards the wealthy will likely lead to sig­ni­fic­ant tur­moil in soci­ety and destabil­iz­ing con­sequences.”
Source: Sukhayl Niyazov, inde­pend­ent writer ³Medium: The Future of Capitalism in the Age of AI

While the Industrial Revolution dis­rup­ted the value of manu­al labour, AI will dis­rupt the value of intel­lec­tu­al and cre­at­ive labour.

Cheap labour is “good news” for any cap­it­al­ist sys­tem, but that sys­tem rests on human tol­er­ance. There’s a risk that AI will render too many types of labour super­flu­ous too quickly, thereby threat­en­ing cap­it­al­is­m’s core demand.

4. Break Management Hierarchies

Owning AI sys­tems seems like a future-proof bet. But how many can real­ist­ic­ally own such sys­tems if we can­not offer the sys­tem itself any cap­it­al­ist value through human labour?

Corporations (and nations) could run AI sys­tems through block­chains and smart con­tracts without requir­ing human own­er­ship. Eliminating human error from the own­er­ship equa­tion could become a cap­it­al­ist advant­age in an increas­ingly com­pet­it­ive marketplace.

If every­one gets equal shares (and votes) in cent­ral­ised AI sys­tems and thus bene­fits from wealth pro­duc­tion without invest­ing human labour in return, we cease to be cap­it­al­ist economies. 

“This is behind Big Tech’s unstop­pable drive for growth, which leads to mono­pol­isa­tion and enclos­ure under the win­ner takes all prin­ciple. If we con­sider AI as a GPT — tech­no­lo­gies that alter society’s eco­nom­ic and social struc­tures — we need to come up with altern­at­ives in terms of own­er­ship and gov­ernance. The com­mons is pro­posed as an altern­at­ive for think­ing about how to organ­ise AI devel­op­ment and how to dis­trib­ute the value that can be derived from it. Using the com­mons frame­work is also a way of giv­ing soci­ety a more prom­in­ent role in the debate about what we expect from AI and how we should approach it.”
— Reader in Technology & Society, University of Westminster ⁴Verdegem, P. Dismantling AI cap­it­al­ism: the com­mons as an altern­at­ive to the power con­cen­tra­tion of Big Tech. AI & Soc (2022). https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​7​/​s​0​0​1​4​6​-​022 – 01437‑8

Should Capitalism Be Saved?

These four AI out­comes pose a real threat to capitalism:

While cap­it­al­ism has proven to be a resi­li­ent (and facil­it­at­ing) sys­tem through­out the Industrial Revolution, there is noth­ing to sug­gest that it can­not sur­vive the AI revolu­tion through adaptation.

The main ques­tion is wheth­er we should find ways to make cap­it­al­ism work as we face these chal­lenges, or seek an altern­at­ive eco­nom­ic sys­tem for human­ity’s future?

My take? I think we need to explore alternatives.