‘Climate change, AI, co-operatives and freedom’

The Cooperative Republic of Guyana is approaching its 60th anniversary of independence in the same backwards political shape it began its post-independence journey, and this column has repeatedly stated that, notwithstanding the perennial lamentations about the growing autocracy, inequalities in the presence of substantial wealth, unaccountable governance, incompetence, corruption etc., the rate of these types of complaints might have increased but have been there all this time and will continue until a way is found to establish ethnically inclusive democratic governance in Guyana.

All politics is global in the sense that one can hardly do anything meaningful that does not affect or is shaped by external realities. One remains politically myopic at one’s peril. Over the last few weeks, I have been addressing the global rise of autocracy that appears to be facilitated by the absence of a holistic emancipating political ideology since the fall of Soviet communism, which was itself far from liberating! While the wish to help one’s country is still present, it appears that globally the major attraction of the political process is the opportunities it offers to accumulate personal wealth.

I have argued before that the intrinsic humanist possibilities of ‘democracy’ have not been allowed to fully develop globally and that until such time as it does the threat of autocratic revival will remain. Liberal democracy is a truncated democratic expression of liberty and is but one of the various democratic outcomes that arose from the European Enlightenment, and democracy will likely remain under pressure from autocracy until it can fully express itself. 

Today, I want to add to this discourse the existential threats being posed by two of the most important global problems; climate change and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). I do so because what is somewhat surprising is that linked to the disagreeable outcomes just discussed, they appear to be leading to a single, if for some a most uncomfortable, acceptable solution. 

The 2025 Global Footprint Network Humanity report claims that our world is demanding over 75% more from nature than the ecosystem can regenerate and that this is contributing to climate disruption, biodiversity loss and resource depletion. Humanity is using the earth’s resources 1.7 times faster than its biocapacity can regenerate. More poignantly, on this calculation, Guyanese will need 2 earths and the Americans 5 if the global population is to have the standard of living of the average Guyanese and American citizens. Given the global attraction of American-type materialism, even considering the present rapid scientific and technological developments, mankind’s present lifestyle is clearly unsustainable.

I recently came upon a podcast in which workers were wearing cameras on their helmets so that AI could learn how to do their jobs with the aim of making them redundant after the process was successfully concluded. The discussants on the podcast were quite concerned about the workers’ welfare after they lost their jobs.  Of course, the welfare implications of workers losing their jobs has more to do with the nature of the political system than with AI. 

But some time ago, the late eminent Professor Stephen Hawking was even more concerned, and voiced what has now become commonplace. He told the BBC that, ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. … It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate … Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.’ 

A colleague of mine said ‘so what’?  Other species, such as almost human Homo neandethalensis, became extinct  not simply superseded. It is said that if one wishes to understand the behaviour of a dog one must start with some understanding of the nature of dogs, and the same applies to human beings. Despite the ever-changing landscape of technology, societal norms and knowledge, over centuries and across cultures, human nature has not significantly changed. (https://ronmci.medium.com/10-characteristics-of-human-nature-that-have-not-changed-throughout-history). 

Homo sapiens is the most rational and universal of all beings: it is that part of nature that makes all of nature its direct means to life, i.e. the object of the activities by which it develops and transforms itself and its society. Humans have been able to exert a dominance over their environment and themselves in a way that no other animal has, and even if they must in some very distant future, they are most unlikely to easily succumb to extinction. It is most likely that the ‘immediate’ outcome of the struggle between the development of AI and human autonomy will  be ‘singularity,’ that is, the point will be reached when AI and other technologies have become so advanced that to meet the challenges posed by them humanity will use the new technologies even if it means having to itself undergo dramatic and irreversible changes. 

Marxism, which appears to be back in vogue, was one of those 19th century European  political philosophies that argued for what I consider the most progressive and comprehensive approach to human freedom. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx argued that mankind wish to have unabated freedom to do, speak, or think as they want. Work/employment is one of the most important social activities and democracy is freedom in society and where possible at work. However, far from being liberating, under capitalism, workers are generally alienated, having no control over the process or outcomes of their labour. 

The political freedoms facilitated by liberal democracy are at best only one aspect of human freedom. The economic system needs not only to be democratised but work – compulsory labour – needs to be kept to a minimum. ‘Just as the savage must wrestle with nature in order to satisfy his wants, in order to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilised man has to do it, and he must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production.’ However, unlike other animals, humans do not only produce under pressure of immediate physical needs: ‘man produces even when he is free from physical needs and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.’ And herein ‘begins the development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom. The shortening of the working day is its fundamental prerequisite’ (Das Capital. 1909).

Guyanese might be interested to note Marx’s claim that ‘The experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that …. [to] save the industrious masses, co-operative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means.’  Years later, he had not changed his mind. ‘If co-operative production is … to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism?’ (Karl Marx 1871 ‘The Civil War in France’).

The suggestion here is that if it is located within more democratic political and economic systems, that focus upon growth/development for human needs rather than production to fulfill the present chaotic expansion of humans wants,  AI can facilitate a radical reduction of the working day and more rational use of the ecosystem while contributing to greater equality and the expansion of human freedom.  Of course, all of this is far easier said than done. In his inaugural Address to the International Working Men’s Association – ‘The First International’ -in London England in 1864,  Marx warned. ‘[T]he lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour.’ 

The Guyanese bourgeoisie heard that on his way home via the West Indies from a visit to the Soviet Union in 1932, Hubert Nathanel Critchlow, the founder of the British Guiana Labour Union and trade unionism in Guyana, was making supportive noises of the situation in the Soviet Union, and the local press commented: ‘We believe all he has said of his experiences and wish to assure him that if and when it suits him we will accommodate him in a cell!’