Comment by Isamu
4 days ago
All sensible points:
>Deployment Lacks Coordination
>AI May Fail to Deliver Technological Progress
>AI Threatens the Workforce
>Economic Growth May Not Materialize
>AI Brings Social Risks
>Party elites have increasingly come to recognize the potential dangers of an unchecked, accelerationist approach to AI development. During remarks at the Central Urban Work Conference in July, Xi posed a question to attendees: “when it comes to launching projects, it’s always the same few things: artificial intelligence, computing power, new energy vehicles. Should every province in the country really be developing in these directions?”
> AI Threatens the Workforce
Under communism, why is this a thing? I know that China hasn't been strictly communist since the Soviets fell but ostensibly, humanoid AI robots under semi-communism is a the dream, no?
From the article, Xi looks down on western “Welfarism”, he believes it makes the population lazy.
And this is not something he came up with. This is a restatement of Stalin's philosophy, taken directly from the New Testament (remember that Stalin was training to be a priest in his youth): "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".
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As a westerner who has at least to some degree been influenced by socialism ideologically, but who perhaps isn't a communist (I don't know what my ideology really is-- and who does), I don't necessarily dislike welfare, but I don't want to build society on it. Instead I want some element of an actual 'to each according to his contribution'-type thing with an exception so that we treat disabled people and others who can't work or who for different reasons end up being unproductive in an acceptable way.
So I don't think this is necessarily unusual in the west either, especially not if you look back to 1950s or 1960s Swedish social democrats.
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An unemployed populace is prone to revolution.
Is it even semi-communism though? IIRC you can't even have an independent union in China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_theory_(Deng_Xiaoping)
A bit old, but still relevant (from Dan Wang's book Breakneck which I am very much enjoying):
In China, The Communist Party's Latest, Unlikely Target: Young Marxists https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669509554/in-china-the-commun...
It's State Capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
The Party is the only Union you need citizen, a Union outside The Party is definitionally a Reactionary, Revisionist, Capitalist, Fascist, Enemy of The State. We outlawed 996, why would you need anyone else?
Of course. They outlawed private schools, get companies to donate multiple % points of their wealth to the state for redistribution, all companies exist purely at the pleasure of the government, nobody's wealth has any effect on their control by the government, etc.
It's a super communist state, it just happens to also embrace many parts of Capitalism.
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In a command economy the unemployment rate can be zero as everyone can be allocated a job. China is not a command economy, it is more like state capitalist which means the government owns/controls companies in key industries.
Companies like Huawei have board members in the CCP but it’s a societal issue if a lot of private companies decide to automate their factories and displace tons of factory workers.
FYI, about 10% of the population in China are party members and you have to be invited, its seen as a good way of getting ahead and building your network. So most board members of most companies are probably party members.
Is China communist?
There has been a huge amount of privatisation. There are literally hundreds of billionaires.
The state still owns some critical things, but is that enough to make it communist? Its not everything and you can have state ownership and still have a ruling class that has control of the means of production which it uses to its own advantage.
The PRC asserts that they follow a modified Marxism-Leninism. Though the ideology is full of hypocrisies and plain old nonsense. For instance, they refer to themselves as a "people's democratic dictatorship" that is "led by the working class". This irrationality extends into their stated foreign policy approach of "peaceful rise" & respecting sovereignty, a "socialist market economy" in which independent labor unions are illegal & violently suppressed, and anything else you can think of.
They're basically totalitarian gaslighters. See how hysterical the PRC gets whenever any nation indicates that they will protect Taiwan from violent invasion. You can see an obsession with narrative control that borders on pathological.
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As China is a communist country with a partly capital economy hoping to transition to socialist society. It is still in the process of transition and AI in its current form and controlled by capitalists will destroy their goal of socialist society. It is different when you have AI that any one can own and use from only the few can afford to own and run.
You got the order mixed up here btw, socialism is the precursor to communism, not the other way around!
Yeah this might actually be the most interesting part of any of the ai bullshit. China as an amalgamation doesn't usually get my respect because overwhelming ccp control just usually destroys everything.
But in this case, it seems pure finger in the eye of expensive cloud AI helping to release somewhat open, run at home models can really turn the whole thing in a positive direction. Even if we have to work a bit to get around whatever alignment they shove in there, with heavy sandboxing and whitelist only networking this can be worked around.
Of course its all a huge gamble, will ccp see these risk and go SHUT IT DOWN. Or could they do one proper thing for once and somehow prop up open models?