The working class has never reaped the rewards of technological progress. Every so-called advancement that promises to free up our time, lighten our load, or give us more control over our lives has only ever done the opposite. Washing machines, typewriters, computers, the internet, smartphones and now AI, each new development has merely shifted the conditions of our exploitation, making it more intense, more inescapable, more relentless. The emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be no different. If anything, it is the culmination of this trend: a technology that will obliterate jobs, entrench inequality, and further enslave workers to the whims of capital.
“AGI isn’t a tool for human progress it’s a weapon for capital.”
Technology Has Never Served the Worker
Capitalism has a simple relationship with technology: whatever increases profit is embraced, whatever threatens the power of the dominant class is crushed. Machines didn’t free workers from the factory, they made them work harder, faster, and longer. The internet didn’t democratise knowledge, it created 24/7 surveillance, perpetual work, and a vast gig economy where people scrape by on crumbs. Productivity gains have never led to shorter working weeks, only to mass redundancies, wage suppression, and the expectation that fewer workers will do the jobs of many. As Marx outlined in Capital, machinery under capitalism doesn’t liberate, it subjugates.
If machinery has become the instrument of man’s enslavement; if this unfailing means for shortening the day’s work prolongs it; if this magic wand for increasing the wealth of the producer impoverishes him—all this is because its use is controlled by the capitalists. These contradictions and antagonisms, inseparable from the use of machinery in a bourgeois environment, spring not from the nature of machinery, but from its employment by capitalists as an exploiting agency. 1
Karl Marx in the People’s Marx (Deville, 1893)
It allows the capitalist to extract more surplus value, intensifying exploitation rather than reducing it. The argument that technology will set us free has always been a lie. Now, with AGI, capital doesn’t even need to pretend.
“Every past technological revolution has tightened the bosses grip. AGI will be no different, only worse.”
Mass Dispossession
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has openly admitted that AGI could lead to mass inequality, mass surveillance, and mass dispossession. The dominant class knows what’s coming because they are the ones designing it. AI isn’t being developed for the benefit of humanity, it’s being designed to replace workers, consolidate power, and ensure that capital no longer even has to deal with the inconvenience of human labour. Remember AI doesn’t sleep, AI doesn’t ask for a raise, better hours, more holiday.
Tech barons and business consultants claim AGI will increase productivity, but that’s just another way of saying fewer workers will be needed. When that happens, do we really believe those profits will be shared? Will the working class finally see the benefits of automation? Of course not. The owners of capital will hoard the wealth while the rest of us are cast aside. At best, a handful will be permitted to eke out a precarious existence in AI-assisted jobs, to be paid less, monitored more, stripped of autonomy.
“The promise of technological freedom is a myth. Under capitalism, technology only ever creates new forms of servitude.”
The Struggle Ahead
If AGI were deployed in a socialist system, one where technological development served the people, not profit, it could genuinely reduce the working week, redistribute wealth, and increase human freedom. But under capitalism, AGI is a threat to workers everywhere. It will be used to discipline, surveil, replace, and dehumanise. The only way to prevent that is through class struggle. We cannot afford to be passive. The dominant class will not regulate AGI in our interests. They will not put the brakes on its deployment. They will not ensure that its benefits are shared. Only a militant working-class movement, fighting for democratic control2 over technology, can prevent AGI from becoming the final nail in the coffin of labour. Because make no mistake, if we do nothing, AGI will not free us. It will make us redundant. And those who own it will rule unchallenged.
Footnotes
- This paragraph perfectly encapsulates Marx’s argument that machinery, rather than liberating workers, becomes a tool of their subjugation under capitalism. It explicitly lays out the contradiction: machinery could shorten the working day and enrich the producer, but because it is controlled by capitalists, it instead lengthens work, deepens exploitation, and concentrates wealth in the hands of the dominant class.
↩︎ - See a left tech utopia in this article ↩︎
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