The ultimate output of AI is turning everyone into unpaid cloud serfs

Evidence

Think of those billions of cloud serfs who are, at this very moment, putting so much time and energy into building up someone else’s cloud capital. Their unpaid labour produces extractive power and cloud rent for very few cloudalists, money that will never re-enter the wider circulation of income, while earning them no income themselves. Allow me to describe this as the shrinking of the global value base. Add to this the wage squeeze that cloud capital also imposes on waged workers, as it increasingly turns them into cloud proles. The result is a substantial reduction in the incomes that the masses can mobilise to buy commodities. This secular drop in effective, or aggregate, demand means more and deeper economic crises. To use an ecological metaphor, capitalists and workers are experiencing something akin to the shrinking of their habitat, pushing endangered species into greater peril, while suffering more frequent extreme weather events. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 639 (#expands, via linked claim)

Assuming, wrongly, that capitalism’s only serious threat was the rise of organised labour, I missed completely the epic transformation of our times: how the privatisation of the internet commons, aided by the 2008 crisis that led central banks to open the floodgates of state money, would beget a new, super-powerful type of capital. How this cloud capital would spawn a new ruling class. How revolutionary that new ruling class would prove, leveraging its cloud capital to make almost the whole of humanity work for them, either for free or for a pittance – including many capitalists. And, crucially, what a backward step all that would prove in the grander scheme of emancipating humanity and the planet from exploitation. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 444 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Cloud platforms exploit nearly everyone rather than only their employees — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 873; Big Tech turned workers into cloud proles and everyone else into cloud serfs.; Platform users become unpaid servants who train algorithms. (+4 more)

Related

• Modern AI and neural networks transform laborers into cloud proles and users into serfs (similarity 0.92)
• Big Tech turned workers into cloud proles and everyone else into cloud serfs. (similarity 0.91)
• Unpaid cloud-serf labor shrinks aggregate demand and deepens economic crises (similarity 0.91)
• Cloud capital made humanity work for free or a pittance (similarity 0.86)
• Cloud capital is physical networked machinery plus unwaged user labor (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud platforms exploit nearly everyone rather than only their employees (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud capital’s historic step was automating the command of humans, not replacing them (similarity 0.83)
• Cloud capital’s key innovation is self-reproduction through unpaid user labor (similarity 0.83)
• Users rather than paid employees produce cloud capital outside markets (similarity 0.82)
• Platform users become unpaid servants who train algorithms. (similarity 0.82)
• Traditional capitalists have become vassals to cloud capital’s feudal overlords (similarity 0.82)
• Cloud capital uniquely combines attention-holding, free labour and privatised transaction spaces (similarity 0.81)
• Cloud capital reproduces itself without waged labour, unlike all prior capital. (similarity 0.81)
• Technofeudalism extends alienation from labor’s products to ownership of minds (similarity 0.80)
• Capital itself, mutated into cloud capital, has killed capitalism (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Unpaid cloud-serf labor shrinks aggregate demand and deepens economic crises #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 639
• Cloud capital made humanity work for free or a pittance #corroborates (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 444