Guglielmo Carchedi on the importance of ChatGPT, Value, and Knowledge in the Current Scenario

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its increasing capabilities have created confusion about how Marx’s analysis of machinery and labour value applies to software-based machines that can self-maintain and upgrade their own code without human labour intervention. Marxist economist Guglielmo Carchedi argues that AI should be seen as mental means of production and therefore material, with value, surplus value, and depreciation all based on labour hours. Unlike objective means of production (such as machines), mental means of production (such as AI) depreciate at a very fast pace due to technological competition rather than physical depreciation. AI technology can also not conceive of contradictions as it lacks a reservoir of potential knowledge from which to mine new knowledge, which is the foundation of creative thinking. Therefore, it cannot generate new knowledge beyond pre-determined mental processes. For humans, the generation of new knowledge comes from inherent contradictions in potential knowledge. This Marxist theory of knowledge is crucial to understanding AI’s role in capitalism, as generated knowledge has a class content and carries social relations. Its relationship to Marx’s law of value is explored in Carchedi’s recent paper, The Ontology and Social Dimension of Knowledge: The Internet Quanta Time, and our book, Capitalism in the 21 century, chapter five.