Imperialists Race for AI Hegemony, Workers Bear the Cost

Editorial Board

As tech monopolies and imperialist politicians debate how to best navigate the artificial intelligence (AI) race to preserve the hegemony of US imperialism—the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower—workers are being laid off, increasingly overworked and exploited, and killed as AI is integrated into production to secure monopoly profits amid economic crisis.

Hysteria and Bullishness

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxen publicly quit his job on September 8, writing on social media that AI monopolies are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” This follows reports that AI monopolies are facing greater challenges in controlling their models, with an OpenAI bot reportedly escaping containment in July and hacking another AI company.

Shortly afterward, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed to agree with the concerns, and wrote an open letter calling for more regulation of the sector.

Amodei put forward a three-step plan ostensibly to restrict AI growth: 1. AI companies should embed third-party evaluators into their companies with “employee-like access”. Amodei specifically recommends METR (Model Evaluation and Threat Research), a research nonprofit funded by and with close ties to top tech billionaires. 2. Coordination with “democratic countries” (i.e., countries subordinated to US imperialism) for common standards. 3. Global coordination between “democratic governments” and “authoritarian governments”.

Against the backdrop of rapid growth fueled by high demand and restricted supply, Amodei proposes a tech cartel to cement the top position of US tech monopolies in the world mainly through collusion.

In fact, when suggesting “industry-wide coordination” in his first point, Amodei specifies in a footnote, “With government mediation or waivers of antitrust restrictions,” that is, the cartel is formed either through government intervention or deregulation.

Following the release of the letter, top tech monopolists came out in support, including Sam Altman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (xAI), and Demis Hassabis (Google).

The letter increased contention among the monopolists. Other tech companies and politicians have come out against the letter, such as the head of Nvidia (a top AI chip maker), and Donald Trump, who has characterized regulations as weakening competition against social-imperialist China.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and others pointed out regulatory frameworks would solidify the monopoly position of the top AI firms and that they are also using the hysteria to create a market for cybersecurity tech they are planning on selling soon.

A slowdown and consolidation of a cartel among the top tech monopolies would hurt Nvidia as the supplier of chips, placing the tech monopolies in a better position to negotiate their purchase.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on September 14, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” adding that only China would benefit from regulation. Trump is arguing for a lack of state or congressional regulation, and instead developing AI under the authority of the executive branch.

The tactical differences belie fundamental unity of the two positions: to preserve US imperialism’s status as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower.

For example, in Amodei’s open letter, he writes, “Pacing within democracies will be limited by the lead that US companies have over authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party… I agree with [US Treasury] Secretary Bessent that a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world…. Thus, a key part of pacing within democracies is to keep democracies’ AI lead over autocracies as large as possible, to give us the breathing room we need in order to pace effectively.”

He specifies that uniting AI monopolies under the hegemony of US imperialism will better serve its ability to force concessions from its imperialist rivals: “Some may believe these measures make it more difficult to cooperate with China, but I believe the opposite is true: these measures increase the leverage held by democracies and make an agreement more likely in the future.”

The tactical differences manifest in hysteria and bullishness, both serving to rally the classes behind US imperialism either through fear or confidence while failing to address its attacks on workers.

AI is Already Being Used to Kill People, But it Won’t End Humanity

Anticipating the end of humanity due to new technological developments is a recurring phenomenon in history. In the last few decades alone, this same alarmism is found with nuclear fallout and environmental collapse. The latest fears around AI are nothing new.

What makes the threat of AI particularly frightening to some is its unique feature of recursive self-improvement—that it can train itself and become more advanced than humans. However, AI is ultimately confined to material forms that are managed by humans; even if the technology advances itself beyond human comprehension and ability, it is still stored on computers and servers that are understood and controlled by people.

Bourgeois ideology uses hysteria to promote its political objective of securing its dictatorship. Hysteria pushes irrationalism and opposes a scientific worldview; it is contagious and aims to whip the masses into a frenzy behind the ruling class. It promotes pragmatism, the narrow prioritization of short-term interests over long-term aims, and pushes for unity behind that section of the ruling class deemed more rational. And as mentioned above, it is good for business, driving consumer trends by making people think they are saving themselves and the world by buying this or that commodity.

This hysteria is an expression of the fact that the bourgeoisie is a dying class, projecting its worldview to convince the people that humanity itself is dying. It is a cheap high that can only last for so long before ruling class intellectuals invent a new boogeyman to distract from the real source of the people’s misery—imperialism itself.

Using AI toward nefarious ends is already a reality. The US and Israel, for example, have already integrated AI into their militaries to murder people. What imperialists fear is the technology being used against them, as seen with the recent fury surrounding claims that Ansar Allah allegedly used Anthropic’s AI bot Claude to develop missiles. As seen in the Iran War and its regional expansion, mass-produced cheap and simple weapons (such as the Shahed drone) by national resistance and national liberation struggles has had devastating impacts on US imperialism and its props in the region. The chatter around “guardrails” is about ensuring US imperialist control of the latest technology.

Imperialism is Parasitic and Impedes Progress

Under imperialism, maximization of profit and militarization drive technological development. As a general rule, widespread adoption of new technology by monopolists takes place amid cyclical economic crises of overproduction. Automation means mass layoffs, while the fewer remaining workers work harder and faster for less pay.

Imperialists want to squeeze as much value out of their technology as they can to get their money’s worth. At the same time, they are compelled to adopt more efficient technologies to produce faster and more cheaply to undercut their competitors. Their solution is to adopt new technology during crises of overproduction, and use the crises as periods of reorganization.

The rapid technological development brought on by AI hides an important truth about imperialism: that technical development takes place on the basis of stifling progress.

Imperialism impedes the development of production in a number of ways. For example: 1. Productive forces and commodities are frequently destroyed either due to overproduction, war, or other crises, 2. Production is anarchistic and driven by profits and war, not the needs of humanity; 3. The drive for profits gives rise to parasitic sectors of the economy, such as finance, that make money off of money, not production, and in fact are barriers to production; 4. Monopolies form a variety of organizations (cartels, trusts) to temporarily minimize competition, allowing them to sell commodities at an artificially high price (or lower price to undercut competitors) while actively suppressing innovations. This includes buying up smaller competitors and patents so they don’t have to roll out new technology; 5. Money and resources are hoarded for investment rather than being used productively; 6. Monopoly ownership can only take place through widespread expropriation and proletarianization of the people, creating workers who have nothing to sell but their labor-power and forced into mind-numbing work that stifles innovation; 7. Imperialism creates a reserve army of labor (unemployed) based on the needs of capital and to induce competition among workers as a form of labor discipline.

The adoption and development of AI takes place on the basis of—and is already contributing to—stifling production. Increased automation means fewer workers on the job but more output, resulting in more poverty among a broader section of society and a constricting market alongside greater production, leading to more intense crises of overproduction. The utopia promised by tech monopolists is nothing more than worsening wage-slavery for workers.

The US is in a prolonged economic crisis, with capital over-saturation in AI (the “AI bubble”) driving economic growth but threatening to collapse if predicted returns on investments are not realized. Record growth in the economy is driven by fewer monopolies than previous years, according to former chief investment strategist Jim Paulsen, highlighting the precarity of the economy. Bourgeois commentators have noted Trump’s opposition to AI regulation underpins concerns about slowing the growth of tech monopolies that are buoying the appearance of a healthy economy and driving some job growth within a wider context of mass layoffs.

Workers and professionals are on the verge of more rapid mass layoffs, which have remained high albeit with some fluctuations over the past several years. The boom in the construction and tech sectors will soon give way to firings and contribute to a domino effect for the rest of the economy.

The development of technology under imperialism increasingly polarizes skilled and unskilled work, with more workers forced into monotonous and low-paying jobs, a trend increasingly devouring professionals. Technology is used to maximize exploitation, from increasing the speed and scale of production to recent trends of using AI to individually pay workers as low as possible (as seen in the so-called gig economy).

Job growth has been concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors while high-paying tech, finance, and office jobs are being cut, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Layoffs in tech increased by 66% in the first five months of the year compared to the same period last year. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is Technology.”

Recent college graduates face a particularly precarious situation, as entry-level jobs are being automated. For those graduates who are employed, more than 40% hold jobs that do not typically require college degrees, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

Far from solving all of humanity’s problems, the pending technological leaps in AI mean the rapid centralization of greater wealth and power in fewer hands, severely aggravating social contradictions.

The problem is not the technology, but who owns and controls the technology. This is why neither regulation nor deregulation will solve the problem, because it does not change ownership of the means of production. Working class control, seized through revolution, is the only solution to bring AI in accord with the needs of humanity.

Image: The Frontier supercomputer, which is in part used to develop AI models. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (CC BY 2.0).

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: