Replicants, Capitalism & Flourishing: A Response to Florian Kleinau’s “Artificial Lives Matter”
by David A. Powers
August 25, 2023
Introduction
As capitalists look to “Artificial Intelligence” to resolve a crisis of profitability, many have come to
believe that we are close to achieving something like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that is,
a form of human like intelligence “that is not tied to specific tasks, [and] has the ability to
generalize and take a broad and interpretative view of the world.” (Kleinau) My background as a
software developer, which includes experience using the types of software tools that are
currently considered to be forms of “Artificial Intelligence,” makes me highly skeptical of these
claims.
Actually, recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence have almost nothing to do with
the quest for Artificial General Intelligence; instead, they merely exploit advances in raw
computational processing power in order to perform cognitive tasks that have traditionally been
performed by humans, without any reference to human cognition or Artificial General
Intelligence as such. And we should keep in mind that there is a vast distance between
automating discrete tasks, even if those tasks involve elements of cognition, versus emulating
the general intellectual capacities of embodied human beings.
Despite my skepticism, I am responding to Florian Kleinau’s article “Artificial Lives Matter,”
because I believe that despite presenting reasonable arguments, the essay fails to address key
problems that must be addressed if we are interested in ideas of human and nonhuman
flourishing. Kleinau claims that discrimination is rooted in the human tendency “to protect
members of their in-group against those that belong to the out-group.” On this basis, Kleinau
argues that “this problem of discrimination based on perceived difference leading to conflict and
violence will take hold in our interactions with artificial agents.” Therefore, in order to mitigate
this potential conflict, “humans must understand AGIs as fellow humans,” and AGIs must be
“fully integrated in human society and culture as equal participants in all human institutions.”
Ultimately, then, “such equality will lead to harmony and flourishing because both, humans and
AGIs work for the continuation of a joint – instead of a separate – human society.”
In order to articulate an alternative viewpoint and raise some questions about Kleinau’s position,
I consider AGIs from the fictional viewpoint of the 1982 film Blade Runner. Following the film’s
lead, throughout this essay I refer to AGIs as “replicants;” replicants are embodied AGIs that
have been created on the model of humans, are able to perform the same jobs that humans
perform, and are similar enough that they could be mistaken for humans in everyday life.
Against Kleinau’s position outlined above, I argue that discrimination is rooted in the actually
existing social division of labor; that if replicants emerge within capitalist society, they will be
created to perform slave labor, leading to inevitable conflict; and that under capitalist conditions,
even if replicants were somehow granted full human rights, conflict would still be inevitable due
to the immanent tendencies of capitalism itself. Finally, I argue that flourishing cannot be
dependent on removing perceived differences between beings, because while replicants do not
yet exist, the Climate Crisis is a contemporary reality, and it cannot be resolved unless we
consider the problem of nonhuman flourishing.
Discrimination Is Rooted in the Division of Labor
There are good reasons to believe that discrimination is not just a matter of perception; following
the Marxist tradition, I claim that discrimination is often rooted in the objective differences
produced within societies that maintain hierarchical divisions of labor. From this point of view,
ideologies of discrimination tend to flourish as post-facto justifications of what is actually the
case within a society, and may even be created by leaders for the explicit purpose of justifying
particular divisions of labor. As an example of the latter, consider the allegory of the metals
found in Plato’s Republic; in the text, the character of Socrates proposes that political elites
should create an ideological myth to justify a particular division of labor:
“You are all brothers... all of you in the city. But when god made you, he used a mixture
of gold in the creation of those of you who were fit to be rulers, which is why they are the
most valuable. He used silver for those who were to be auxiliaries, and iron and bronze
for the farmers and the rest of the skilled workers.... If their own child is born with a
mixture of bronze or iron in him, they must feel no kind of pity for him, but give him the
position in society his nature deserves, driving him out to join the skilled workers or
farmers. On the other hand, any children from those groups born with a mixture of gold
or silver should be given recognition, and promoted either to the position of guardian or
to that of auxiliary. There is a prophecy, god tells them, that the end of the city will come
when iron or bronze becomes its guardian.” (Plato, 108)
Replicants Will Be Created as Labor-Saving Devices
If discrimination is rooted in the division of labor and real social differences, then before we
examine the problem of discrimination against replicants, we must first consider the social
conditions that are likely to produce replicants in the first place. If we assume that capitalism will
continue, and that replicants will be produced on the basis of contemporary technological
developments, then we can conclude that replicants will be created as labor-saving machines,
in the same way that current Artificial Intelligence tools aim at increasing productive capacity by
automating human cognitive labor. In other words, replicants will be created to perform slave
labor.
In a passage of the Grundrisse, Karl Marx describes the way that labor-saving machines used in
the capitalist production process appear as antagonistic “alien powers” from the viewpoint of
human workers:
[Once] adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes
through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an
automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its
most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set
in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting
of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are
cast merely as its conscious linkages.... [The machine’s] distinguishing characteristic is
not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker’s activity to the
object; this activity, rather, is posited in such a way that it merely transmits the machine’s
work, the machine’s action, on to the raw material – supervises it and guards against
interruptions. Not as with the instrument, which the worker animates and makes into his
organ with his skill and strength, and whose handling therefore depends on his virtuosity.
Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is
itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it
consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to
keep up its perpetual motion. The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of
activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and
not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by
their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s
consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the
power of the machine itself.
Following this logic, I claim that the film Blade Runner actually provides a reasonably accurate
reflection of capitalist societies, in which “the demand for men necessarily governs the
production of men, as of every other commodity.” (20, Marx/Milligan) Under capitalist conditions,
the same thing necessarily applies to the production of replicants. In Blade Runner, the head of
Tyrell corporation, like any good capitalist, is only interested in replicants as a source of profit:
“Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell, more human than human is our motto. Rachel is an
experiment, nothing more.” And in the film’s opening text crawl, the connection between slavery
and violent conlict is explicit:
Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into
the NEXUS phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a Replicant...
Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and
colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 compat team in an
Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth – under penalty of death.
Capitalism Leads to Inevitable Conflict
Let us suppose, however, that replicants are not slaves, but are instead granted equal rights
within the context of capitalist nation-states. In such a situation, conflict would still be inevitable,
because of the structure of capitalism itself. From the perspective of workers, there are two
forms of immanent conflict built into capitalism. In his early work his early Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx describes the necessary antagonism between worker
and capitalist:
“Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker.
Victory goes necessarily to the capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker
then can the worker without the capitalist... Should supply [of workers] greatly exceed
demand, a section of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The worker’s
existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other
commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer. And the demand on which
the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.”
(19-20, Marx/Milligan)
Furthermore, antagonism also exists between workers themselves due to competition for jobs.
In his 1847 lectures to workers, later translated and published by Engels as “Wage Labour and
Capital”, Marx argues:
“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10,
or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold,
or twentyfold.... Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour
increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless.
He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither
physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors
press upon him from all sides.... [Urged] on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous
effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he
receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against
his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer
themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he
competes against himself as a member of the working class.... Machinery produces the
same effects, but upon a much larger scale... it throws workers upon the streets in great
masses; and as it becomes more highly developed and more productive it discards them
in additional though smaller numbers.”
On this basis, therefore, I claim that even if replicants were granted full human rights, conflict
and violence would still occur if capitalism and the division of labor continued. After all, capitalist
society already produces more workers than are strictly necessary for the continuation of the
capitalist economy, and it follows that the creation of replicants is likely to exacerbate that
problem. Thus, even without explicit group conflict between humans and replicants, the majority
of humans and replicants would not have the opportunity to flourish as long as they were
subject to the threat of starvation and beggary. Furthermore, reflection on the history of racism
should convince us that where the potential for group conflict exists, unscrupulous actors are
likely to encourage bigotry for economic or political gain. Therefore, I would suggest that if one
is seriously interested in the possibility of humans and replicants flourishing in the future, we
would first need to face and overcome capitalism, and the current structural conditions that
make human flourishing impossible.
Climate Change & Nonhuman Flourishing
At this point, we need to move away from speculation about replicants which do not yet exist.
Instead, we must consider the current Climate Crisis, along with the related Sixth Mass
Extinction event. Here, it becomes apparent that attempts to root flourishing in similarity fail,
because animals, plants, and ecosystems have very different needs from human beings.
Furthermore, resolving our ecological crises requires more than just changes in perspective,
since it is the logic of capital accumulation and economic growth that lie behind them, and this
logic is expressed in a global social totality that governs most human economic activity on the
planet. If we are serious about overcoming the Climate Crisis, we need to reorganize human
society to overcome capitalism on a global scale, and develop new forms of life that allow the
biosphere to flourish.
Although we do not yet know precisely what those forms of life are, I claim that the human body
provides a model for thinking about flourishing, once we comprehend that the human body itself
is always already radically alien and Other. This is so because, on the one hand, from the point
of view of consciousness, we can never really know our bodies and the vastly complex systems
that operate at every moment to sustain our lives. But beyond that, we are almost totally
ignorant of the reality that our guts contain vast ecosystems full of innumerable living beings,
and our continued survival as human organisms depends on the flourishing of those nonhuman
beings.
From the point of view of the biosphere, nonhuman living beings outside the body are not so
different from the nonhuman beings that live in our guts. We are all dependent on the biosphere,
and the biosphere itself is a system produced through the interactions of all living beings along
with the inorganic matter of the planet. Mature human individuals recognize that life and
consciousness depend on the body, and so learn to take care of it through developing good
habits and setting reasonable limits. In the same way, it is time to mature as a species, and
undergo a process of transformation that will allow us to create practices and forms of life that
allow the biosphere to flourish.
Perceptions will certainly change under such circumstances, but achieving this transformation is
not a matter of merely changing perspective, but of actually undergoing the difficult process of
working through the antagonisms of capitalism. Only on this basis is there a possibility of
creating a world where humans and the biosphere can flourish together; and in such a world, we
can imagine that perhaps replicants too might have the opportunity to flourish.
Bibliography
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Accessed 25 Aug. 2023.
Photo Credit to Florian Haun