How Artists Can Liberate A.I. (From Capital)
It’s time to claim the means of information!
For decades, from seemingly ubiquitous hardware products and the open-source software which undergirds them, to the ocean of content leveraged for digital commercial velocity, “Big Tech” has captured the fruits of the public to net trillions in revenue.
There is perhaps no bigger example than the smartphone; a composite of not only multivariate technologies — from the GPS system to the camera — produced directly from publicly-funded research, but also sustained through applications composed of grand sums of user-generated content.
The public however, receive neither remuneration nor return for their investments. Might this be the crack to hatch a new order?
The Demands
Galvanized by the increasing popularity of text-to-image models such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E, trained on a vast array of aesthetic data including their own publicly available artwork, artists have found themselves the vanguard of revitalizing the discourse around intellectual property.
But what if the solution could go beyond arguments of copyright?
“…this simple, practical measure would be for a portion of the machines of every company to become the property of everyone — with the percentage of profits corresponding to that portion flowing into a common fund to be shared equally by all.”
— Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy
Rather than a tax-funded “Universal Basic Income”, what Varoufakis suggests is a Universal Basic Dividend, whereby a portion of the profits made by publicly subsidized innovations goes into a public fund disseminated using a basic dividend.
Imagine the creation of a Universal Basic Dividend, actuated through a Public-Fund that entitles to itself a percentage of the profits from publicly-subsidized corporations and products.
Paid General Strike
Among its foremost advocates, there are many who populate the discussion about Artificial Intelligence with warnings of the coming A.I. apocalypse catalyzed by the potential backlash of the public against wide-spread commercial automation.
For these merchants of techno-paranoia, the solution is simple: include the public as rightful beneficiaries of the machines they collectively sanctioned with funding, data, and paid as well as unpaid labour.
Conversely, for the public who compose the priorities of said labour, the model becomes clear:
The same way a General Strike empowers workers to claim the value of their labour to organize collectively, could a Universal Basic Dividend financially empower the 99% to realize true democracy; Universal Sovereignty for all?
What needs must such an effort seek to fulfill?
The theorist Lyford P. Edwards concentrates on the crucial role revolution plays in destroying “those institutions of a given society which interfere with the attainment of one or more of the four elemental human wishes.”
According to Edwards, humans crave new experience, security, recognition and response (touch and love).
— Micah White, PhD, The End of Protest
To respond effectively to the needs of individuals, an institution must also recognize the legitimacy of their voice as citizens, securing them the freedom to seek out new experiences through such means of democracy.
Therefore, to truly democratize the benefits of technology, we must first claim for ourselves its means.
What could the power of organized labour accomplish, when liberated from the constraints of their class?
Might the true key to democratic liberation for the public be the liberation of Artificial Intelligence from the interests of capital?
