AI, Capitalist Competition, and the Threat to Humanity: A
Marxist Analysis
Jacob Coxon's resignation from Anthropic, a company that
loudly champions 'AI safety,' has been portrayed in the media as a personal
moral crisis a lone engineer stepping back from dangerous territory. But it is
actually much more important: it reveals, from within the industry, that the
entire AI sector is propelled not by scientific progress or human necessity,
but by capitalist competition driving toward potentially disastrous results
that its own creators worry about.
Coxon’s warning is clear: “the people building AI earnestly
believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” This isn’t just a
speculative fear or a distant hypothetical. It’s the assessment of those with
the deepest technical understanding of the systems being created. Still, Coxon
admits, “coordination between competing capitalist firms racing for market
dominance and state backing cannot be relied upon.” The industry presses on at
full speed. This paradox—knowing the danger but feeling compelled to act— isn’t
psychological. It’s structural. Capitalism’s logic asserts itself forcefully
and without ambiguity.
Anthropic was established by a splinter group from OpenAI,
aiming for safer AI development. However, after three years, Coxon notes the
company finds itself in the same competitive race it tried to avoid. This is
because, under capitalism, no company can afford to slow its progress without
risking destruction by competitors. The safety issue isn’t purely
technical; it's tied to the nature of economic relationships. Under the
capitalist system, “responsible scaling’ often remains just a marketing phrase,
not a practical reality.
Evan Hubinger, who still works at Anthropic, emphasises the serious risk. He estimates there's over a 10% chance that AI could eradicate all humans within ten years, despite the company's lack of concrete plans to address superintelligence alignment and its unclear progress. Samuel Marks, another staff member, notes that concern levels
increase with seniority. These are not marginal opinions; they come from
engineers directly involved with the systems. Their warnings are grounded in technical realities, yet companies continue on their current course.
This illustrates the “rational irrationality” of capitalism:
every firm needs to grow faster or face collapse. The overall result—possibly
human extinction—fails to concern the market. Marx recognised this
contradiction 150 years ago: productive forces outpace the social relations
meant to control them. AI is just the latest, most intense form of this
dilemma.
The Resignation Genre as Political Symptom
The media often depicts each resignation as a unique
human-interest story: such as the conscientious objector, the disillusioned
researcher, or the engineer who quits to pursue poetry. However, together, these stories expose a deeper trend: a technical workforce awakening to its own powerlessness within capitalist production.
Mrinank Sharma cautions that “the world faces danger… not
only from AI or bioweapons, but from a web of interconnected crises happening
right now,” then announces he will leave the industry to pursue poetry. Another
OpenAI researcher resigns over adding advertising to a chatbot used for sharing
“their medical fears, relationship issues, beliefs about God and the
afterlife,” warning of “possible manipulation of users.” These actions are not
mere acts of conscience, but signs of alienation. Engineers, once confident as
innovators, now see themselves as workers under capital, forced to develop
systems they fear and cannot control.
The apocalyptic warnings—such as “10 per cent chance of
killing all humans” and “could kill us all by the end of the decade”—serve a
specific ideological purpose. They depict catastrophe as unavoidable,
suggesting AI is an autonomous force beyond human control. This sense of
fatalism hides a key truth: AI is not a metaphysical entity but a social
relation. People create it—engineers in Silicon Valley, data annotators in
Kenya and the Philippines, miners in the Congo, and chip fabricators in Taiwan.
The question of whether AI becomes a tool of liberation or
barbarism is not a technical question of “alignment.” It is a political
question of ownership and control. Between the present order and any
catastrophic outcome stands the international working class.
Coxon proposes a “temporary ban on improving model
capabilities,” but admits it is unlikely because coordination between competing
firms and states cannot be relied upon. This is the essential point. Regulation
cannot restrain capital. The capitalist state is not a neutral arbiter; it is
the ruling class's executive committee. It exists to defend private property,
not to restrain it. Every proposal for “responsible scaling,” “constitutional
AI,” or “government oversight” collapses the moment profit demands
acceleration. The market does not permit restraint. The only solution is
expropriation.
The Socialist Program for AI
Coxon and his colleagues
highlight a contradiction capitalism cannot solve. Addressing this issue calls
for a revolutionary overhaul of how we own and control productive resources.
The socialist plan is explicit: nationalise AI, cloud services, semiconductor
companies, and platform monopolies, and turn them into public utilities managed
democratically by workers. Ensure no worker loses their job to automation by
using AI to shorten workweeks without reducing pay. Also, bring all AI
development under international planning, directing research to serve human
needs rather than profit.
End the secrecy kept by
private corporations by making all models, datasets, and research pipelines
publicly accessible. Finally, use AI as a tool for global economic
planning—helping coordinate production, reduce waste, and enhance living
standards worldwide. This is not a reformist agenda but a revolutionary one. It
demands that the working class take control of the productive forces and reorganise society around socialist principles. The resignations at Anthropic and OpenAI
are not moral crises but alerts from within capitalism's core. Those closest to
the technology fear it could destroy humanity—yet the system forces them to
continue developing it.
This represents capitalism's most fundamental contradiction:
a social system that endangers humanity's survival. Humanity faces a clear
choice: the working class must take control of the technology and utilise it to
establish a rational, planned, socialist society—or the ruling class will
persist in its reckless pursuit of disaster. The future of AI is fundamentally
political, not technical. Its outcome will be determined not by
engineers or executives, but through the conscious struggle of the
international working class.
Technology, Theory and the Reconquest of Historical
Memory in the Epoch of Capitalist Breakdown- The Political Significance of Socialist
AI
The recent release by Socialist World Media of 'The Man Trotsky:
Rae Spiegel’s 1940 memoir describing her time as Trotsky’s secretary in Mexico
provides a rare, close look into the working style of one of the 20th century's
most significant revolutionary thinkers. Spiegel’s memories, written before her
later political shifts and her sympathetic portrayal of Joseph Hansen,
highlight Trotsky’s remarkable seriousness: his focus on accuracy, his refusal
to separate theory from practice, and his unwavering dedication to equipping
the working class intellectually. They remind us that Trotsky viewed Marxism
not merely as an academic subject but as a dynamic science, inherently linked
to the daily responsibilities of revolutionary leadership.
This portrait provides a valuable perspective for evaluating
Socialism AI, a tool launched by the World Socialist Web Site to offer workers,
students, and youth direct access to 175 years of Marxist theory and nearly 30
years of WSWS analysis. The project has already faced expected hostility from
the pseudo-left, which has never accepted the WSWS’s support for Trotskyist
orthodoxy. It now also opposes the WSWS’s use of artificial intelligence.
However, understanding the political significance of Socialism AI requires
looking beyond this hostility. It must be viewed within its broader context:
the worsening crisis of global capitalism, the decline of public intellectual
life, and the urgent need to equip the working class with the theoretical
awareness necessary for a socialist revolution.
The Destruction of Public Intellectual Life
Over the past forty years, institutions that foster
independent political thought have gradually been dismantled. Public education
has suffered, universities now function like corporate entities, journalism
prioritizes entertainment and propaganda, and political debate has shifted to
the moralistic shows of identity politics. The bourgeoisie has not only given
up on nurturing an educated citizenry but has also taken steps to undermine it.
This destruction is intentional, mirroring the ruling
class's response to a crisis of unprecedented scale. Marx's contradictions—such
as declining profit rates, the expansion of fictitious capital, global
production integration, and escalating imperialist tensions—have become
unmanageable using conventional approaches. The bourgeoisie sees an educated
working class as a threat to capitalist control. Therefore, dismantling public
intellectual life becomes a strategy to prevent workers from acquiring the
historical and theoretical knowledge needed to challenge the system.
In these conditions, workers confront major political and
geopolitical issues without the institutional support that existed even in the
mid-20th century. They must navigate conflicts involving nuclear-armed states,
the rise of authoritarian regimes, the decline of traditional political
parties, and the unraveling of the post-Cold War order. Yet, they do so in a
society where significant political education has almost vanished from public
life. Socialism AI seeks to fill this void.
Trotsky regarded technology within Marxism as a scientific
explanation of historical development. He neither idolized nor feared
technological progress; instead, he saw it as linked to the development of
productive forces, emphasizing that the working class should control these
innovations for their own benefit. In the 1920s and 1930s, Trotsky highlighted
the political significance of radio, film, and mass media, arguing they could
reduce workers' isolation, promote revolutionary ideas, and challenge bourgeois
ideological dominance. He believed the socialist movement should actively adopt
and leverage these technologies rather than reject them.
His approach was dialectical: class relations influence
technology, and technology, in turn, influences class. It can both increase
exploitation and broaden the working class's intellectual horizons. Socialism
AI must be viewed through this lens. It is not merely an innovative tech
product or a consumer gadget but a political tool—integrating Marxist theory
with current analysis to make political education accessible to workers historically
deprived of it.
As David North has explained, Socialism AI is “a means of
intellectual counter‑attack, of recovering the historical memory of the working‑class
movement.” This is not a marginal claim. The reconquest of historical memory
has always been central to the Trotskyist movement. The bourgeoisie and its
ideological representatives have spent decades falsifying the history of the
Russian Revolution, obscuring the crimes of Stalinism, and promoting the pseudo‑left
tendencies that emerged from the wreckage of the 1960s. The destruction of
historical memory is not merely an academic issue; it has direct political
consequences. A working class that does not know its own history cannot develop
a revolutionary consciousness. Socialism AI extends the movement’s historic
struggle for historical clarity into a new technical form.
The Pseudo‑Left’s Hostility to Theory
The opposition of the pseudo-left to Socialism AI is
fundamentally political, not technical. On a forum hosted by the Socialist
Party of Great Britain, a thread titled “WSWS group to launch a ‘Socialism AI’”
featured many dismissive comments—criticisms that lacked genuine engagement
with the technology or its underlying political philosophy. The WSWS has
already responded to one critic, Dmitri, pointing out that his objections,
“notwithstanding his use of technical jargon, exemplify the widespread misunderstanding
of AI and hostility to the Marxist perspective on technology among middle-class
radicals."
This hostility reveals a deeper issue: the pseudo-left’s
rejection of Marxist theory itself. The pseudo-left isn't genuinely socialist;
instead, it is a middle-class ideological movement rooted in identity politics,
academic post-structuralism, and the politics of personal expression. It
dismisses Marxism's scientific approach, downplays the working class, and
treats political analysis as moral performance. Therefore, opposition to
Socialism AI is expected. This resistance stems from a fear of any effort that
reestablishes the importance of a scientifically grounded socialist viewpoint
or expands the working class's intellectual capacities.
Artificial intelligence is inherently political, developed
amid capitalist exploitation, corporate monopolies, and imperialist
competition. The bourgeoisie employs AI to increase workplace monitoring,
automate management, boost military power, and extract more surplus value.
However, this does not rule out repurposing AI for socialist aims.
Marxism does not oppose technological progress; instead, it
aims to free it from capitalist control and put it under the democratic
authority of the working class. Socialism AI demonstrates how AI can enhance
the working class's intellectual abilities rather than reduce them. It
functions as a tool for political education, historical understanding,
theoretical clarification, and strategic planning.
The importance of Socialism AI lies not in its novelty but
in the political goal it advances. It appears at a time when capitalism faces a
worldwide crisis, the working class is re-emerging in history, and the demand
for clear theory is higher than it has been since the 1930s.
Socialism AI offers a way to attain clarity. It does not
replace political struggle or the WSWS. Still, it serves as a strong tool for
reclaiming historical memory and empowering the working class with the
theoretical awareness needed for socialist revolution. It merits serious
consideration from workers, students, and youth who aim to understand their
history and theories to prepare for future struggles.
