Digital Dialectics and the precarious position of the labour market
Writing a little piece for a tech society on the ethical implicaitons of A.I and increased automation on the labour market , this is 3rd draft, maybe some revision needed later down the line !
The introduction of automation alongside the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has undoubtedly upscaled modern modes of production, but in the cultivation of a far more efficient labour market, a myriad of ethical dilemmas surrounding the position of human productivity have emerged worldwide.
How we build and use Generative A.I will be the defining development inside of the 21st century labour market, so as Artificial automaton inaugurates new forms of industry it is imperative that we step back from the limited lens of incentivised surplus capital to ensure we integrate AI ethically.
The speed in which generative AI has begun to inscribe itself into production lines leads to an important ethical dilemma regarding the unstable future for the current global workforce. The relentless pace in which AI is ‘taking over’ and modulating man-powered production, coupled with the commercial clamour of online ‘AI intrigue 'has worked to rentrench the idea that humans are in need of consistent forward momentum.
At first this presents itself as a positive, For A.I is truly a reflection of sciences capacity to transform nature for human benefit, but what this acceleration in AI-enhanced productivity fails to acknowledge is just how deeply it undercuts the value of human labour, so much so, that the work of any human will eventually be marked as redundant in the face of emerging digitalism. In each strata of the labour line, technology has raised the bar for what could be considered as the bare minimum in efficiency. Again, at first this can be held as positive - for, in elevating the minimum, the skills used, profit made, and value of the commodity is all upleveled - but when we break out of the commodity-profit-capital loop, we can see that this acceleration in efficiency, this increase in labour-demand, is in fact working against the worker, resulting in widespread occupation-anxiety.
There are mass levels of anxiety as peoples jobs are being superseded by generative automation. Workers are now expected to complete tasks at a much faster, unsustainable speed or run the risk of a machine taking over their job. This is of course not to argue that it is AI itself that is purposefully generating fear, rather, as Emad Mostaque, the C.E.O of stability A.I, claims “A.I won’t replace people. People with Ai will replace people.”
Within the first wave of digital automation came the belief that AI would only be taking over the ‘non skilled’ repetitive labour. Stretching from packaging commodifiable goods, to automated waiter table service at restaurants. This seemed to appease many, calm in the fact that only the labour of the lower-class was being put in a position of jeopardy, but now it is expanding upward, into the ‘high-skill’ labour market, in a piece entitled ‘Social capital and the three levels of digital divide.’ (2017) Sociologist, Ragnedda, noted that the ‘implementation of ICT is leading to a situation whereby even in manual jobs the mediation of some electronic device is necessary. Almost any job already needs some kind of generic knowledge or skill in the use of new technologies.’ And now, we have reached a point where one's digital dialectics plays a defining role in ‘determining the opportunities of individuals in the labour market.’ And now an increased number of workers in every class strata cannot keep up with the unrelenting productivity that AI and digital automation inspires.
It is understandable to liken this upsurge in automation to that of the industrial revolution; uprooting worker’s skills and implementing new, more advanced ways to complete labour. But the scalability of AI is far greater than we have ever seen, (or are even currently able to comprehend) Because, unlike the Industrial revolution, it not only is able to modulate and improve current lines of production, but actually entirely uproot them. So where the Industrial revolution took previously unstructured tasks, subdivided and simplified them to reach more advanced levels of the same production process, the introduction of a generative digital interface enables tasks previously performed by human labour to be produced only by generative AI.
A major antagonism in the labour market of the Industrial revolution was between the profit of the factory worker versus the surplus capital of the factory owner, but with the modulated digital workforce, this antagonism becomes diluted and difficult to follow. The revolution in AI triggers not only an antagonism in class relations but between the self-automating machine and humanity as a whole.
Whilst this is more so an account of the ethical dilemmas regarding the precarious digitised labour market than a socialist attack on automation, a snippet from Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ can assist us in understanding the possible, digitised exploitation of human labour; ‘The proletarian is merely a machine for the production of surplus-value, the capitalist too, is merely a machine for the transformation of this surplus-value into surplus capital.’
So whilst A.I is something to be excited about, the development of digital technologies has created new forms of exploitation, in which the labour of human’s is being viewed under the machinations of ‘machine.’ And thus this automated uprooting of our current labour market calls for an implementation of ethical regulations and laws before we can become excited about the advancement of A.I
The impact of increased digitisation in the labour market is still far too ambiguous to be concretely defined, but what we can be certain of is that the current pace of automation produces a myriad of ethical dilemmas for the future of human employment, which, currently has been put in a very precarious position.