About a month ago, I finished writing a work titled “The Anti-AI Manifesto.”

I have published it in two versions, a complete version that is some sixteen thousand words long, and a short version that can be read in six to seven minutes of time. I write this letter for the purpose of describing, as succinctly as possible, the necessity of writing this piece, and a request to make of those who are already convinced of worker’s liberation to read it and spread it as far and as wide as possible.

Why write this work?

Nearly four years after the beginning of the AI boom, neither a genuine movement nor a substantive infrastructure that works against the AI industry exists. I define the AI industry as the overall project of capitalists to entwine AI with the rest of the economy, from trillion-dollar technology companies to the endless amount of AI startups that aspire to be among these companies. You undoubtedly already know that this industry is perhaps the most exorbitantly funded project the world has seen. You have likely already seen immeasurable damage it has already done to the arts, academia, and the environment. And you likely have observed that for as much atomized voices of disgust have been raised against this economic bubble, or as many artworks created in rejection of generative AI, or even the publication of a well-meaning encyclical from the papacy, that nothing has seemingly occurred; save for perhaps the halting of the construction of some data centers.

Artificial intelligence as a technology is undoubtedly not going to suddenly cease to exist, nor can anyone seriously believe it is completely useless for any practical purposes. While projections of imminent, self-improving superintelligent AI are undoubtedly overblown, it is pointless to deny what AI is capable of doing, or will soon be capable of doing. That AI will change this world, is inevitable. I make this piece to argue that it is not inevitable that AI will change the world in the way that every tech billionaire claims it will, that what every sector of society is embracing, that the entire world is wrong.

The focal point of the work is that a fundamental contradiction has arisen from the AI industry. The contradiction is that the underlying technologies of AI, and the modern world, has proven that all classes, all injustices, all scarcities, and all alienation can be abolished. Yet these technologies have not automatically created a utopia. What has been seen is the opposite, that these technologies have made the world more alienated than ever before, that living is becoming more and more unaffordable, and societal inequality has never been worse than it is now.

I note that the arduous transformation demanded of society to build socialism will not be magically skipped by a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence; the transition to the next mode of production will still require tremendous amounts of effort and turmoil by the working class. What these technologies enable, when developed and applied in the context of socialism, is the structural possibility of the higher stage of communism, where labor itself is abolished.

I wrote this piece to both describe this fundamental contradiction, and to declare that the antithesis of the AI industry must be anti-capitalist in its nature. Many existing organizations exist that try to present an alternative the current project of AI. They are hopelessly bound to economic framework of liberalism and tacit acceptance of the world as it ex sts, and thus espouse meaningless objections based off AI theoretically causing doomsday events, or an AI torturing everyone who does mot help bring it to conception. These organizations either seek to create an ideologically broad coalition that is unable to answer the fundamental causes of private property and commodification, or worse yet simply try to outcompete firms with more nihilistic worldviews. The movement against the AI industry must be one and the same with the movement against capitalism.

There arises the question of why I have given this piece the provocative title of its thought defining the “anti-AI” movement, and why I believe its text is comprehensive enough to be declared the manifesto of this movement. It is my intention, by naming this a piece the manifesto against AI, to define the question of what it means to be anti-AI, in a position that is genuinely capable of standing against the current hegemony of the expansion of current tech enterprise.

The current definitions of what it is to be anti-AI include blanket rejection of the technology on no real material grounds, individualistic boycotts with no revolutionary potential, or the aforementioned thought on it as a doomsday threat. The vacuum of any such real movement against AI signifies that there is also no clear meaning as to what being anti-AI is. To be anti-AI ought not to evoke simple abstinence from AI products, nor to blindly consider AI an apocalyptic threat. The phrase anti-AI ought to indicate a clear rejection of the fundamental paradigm that the expansion of capitalism by AI is desirable or inevitable.

What should I do?

In the work, I provide a draft program outlining a proposed relationship between the socialist movement and artificial intelligence that entails the construction of a dual power that works for the interests of the working class, and for the state fight against the AI industry. I do not propose for this program to be replicated without alteration by any party. The program is simply proof that a comprehensive program against AI, one that ideally would be created by the masses, can ultimately be made.

In order for such a program to be implemented, I give three general directives that I urge its reader to follow. The directives- specifically tailored to be applicable by the working class of not just the United States but every country- ask for the reader to join and become an active member of a party that is socialist and democratic, to partake in the organization of labor, and to recognize the necessity of violence to establish democracy and fight the most brutal of imperialism reaction when it arises.

Given that you are reading this in a socialist magazine, you almost certainly already do all of this. The request I have for you is to read at the very least, the short version of the manifesto; and I ask that if you agree with its premises; that you spread it as far and wide as you can. These directives have been made countless times before, but they have not been made being tied to the promise of what artificial intelligence in socialism could achieve, and certainly have not been made with the context of the obvious contradiction that is in front of the world for everyone to see.

I ask you this especially if you are someone of any presence whatsoever, whether online or in the traditional media. If you make socialist content for any social media platform, be it Instagram, or Tiktok, or Youtube, then point to this work, summarize it any way you wish, add onto it or give takes where I have neglected to address. If you are a journalist, for any publication, from the bourgeoise mass media to student outlets, then write of this, in any framing you desire. Even if you are of no renown whatsoever, if you have creative ability; I ask of you to make derivative works of the manifesto; whether it be infographics, or short videos explaining its key points, or posters to plaster across cities around the world.

In fact, I ask you to be as skeptical, or critical, or even scathing of the work as necessary. I have no pretension that either version of this work is flawless; much of its thought has already been subject to evolution in the years since I started drafting it; and I am sure it will continue to do so. I urge you, in anything you create, to freely criticize any part of it, whether it be my dismissal of existing AI alignment, the dual power I propose, or my specific praise of the DSA as a revolutionary organization. Ruthless criticism must come, not just by my ideological enemies, but those who are similarly aligned with democratic socialism but are not fully convinced of these methods. This piece deserves nothing less than a trial by fire.

I would like to place equal amounts of stress on both a realistic projection of what I believe this piece could actually accomplish, as well as overt optimism as to the reaches it could attain. I have no delusions that this piece will cause the massive bubble of speculation surrounding AI to burst and for the massive investment of capital into the scheme to end. I know that this manifesto, being read by a massive amount of people, will not immediately start a revolution, nor do I believe that anything tangible will occur in the immediate aftermath of it being published. No matter what I could possibly write, one pamphlet alone can not cause parties and unions around the world to explode in membership, for massive strikes to occur in every economy, and for the armed liberation of the oppressed to be achieved.

What optimism I have, conversely, is for the work to be read by everyone. I believe, no matter how impossible it may seem, that getting millions to gleam the short version and thousands to read the complete version in full, is possible. The optimism I have is for this to stoke fear into the countable handful of billionaires that must, for once in their lives, feel fear. The optimism I have is for the three word phrase I coined in it to go down in history. I hope that this piece inspires a hundred other works of superior value to be made, and for these works to contain what words need to be said that I couldn’t have said, and that these works inspire the actions that really need to be done.

And I know that something has to be done. For some time after I finished writing the piece; I tried to get away from it all, trying to forget about the AI industry and how it has seized the world. Writing it has consumed so much of my life that I did not give myself much time at all to breathe, to remember a world exists outside of this struggle. I tried to find the glimmers of creativity and passion that existed in this world, even if I know capitalism has infected every inch of it, surely there was a time when there was less of it all. Of course, it was unignorable. I saw it no matter what site I went to. I saw it on billboards, talked about by people. I saw it in my own life, I saw it in all other life, in the burning of the wrong Amazon, in the melting of the wrong ice.

I don't want to have to carry the burden of this piece for much longer. I'm tired of reckoning with the world. But I need to keep fighting. I need this dark age to end. I need the hopelessness in the eyes of everyone I ever loved to be gone. For everyone I ever knew who have fallen into the nihilistic drive for capital. For everyone I have never known, who simply wonder about what life looks like beyond the sea. For all of them to be free.

The link to the manifesto is here. You can read either version first; but the long version is what I had originally written and should answer most lingering questions. Thank you for reading, and may soon you will see the dawn of a better day for humanity.

-Zhao Levi