Replicants, Capitalism & Flourishing: A Response to Florian Kleinau’s “Artificial Lives Matter”

by David A. Powers

August 25, 2023

Introduction

As capitalists look to “Artificial Intelligence” to resolve a crisis of profitability, many have come to

believe that we are close to achieving something like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that is,

a form of human like intelligence “that is not tied to specific tasks, [and] has the ability to

generalize and take a broad and interpretative view of the world.” (Kleinau) My background as a

software developer, which includes experience using the types of software tools that are

currently considered to be forms of “Artificial Intelligence,” makes me highly skeptical of these

claims.

Actually, recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence have almost nothing to do with

the quest for Artificial General Intelligence; instead, they merely exploit advances in raw

computational processing power in order to perform cognitive tasks that have traditionally been

performed by humans, without any reference to human cognition or Artificial General

Intelligence as such. And we should keep in mind that there is a vast distance between

automating discrete tasks, even if those tasks involve elements of cognition, versus emulating

the general intellectual capacities of embodied human beings.

Despite my skepticism, I am responding to Florian Kleinau’s article “Artificial Lives Matter,”

because I believe that despite presenting reasonable arguments, the essay fails to address key

problems that must be addressed if we are interested in ideas of human and nonhuman

flourishing. Kleinau claims that discrimination is rooted in the human tendency “to protect

members of their in-group against those that belong to the out-group.” On this basis, Kleinau

argues that “this problem of discrimination based on perceived difference leading to conflict and

violence will take hold in our interactions with artificial agents.” Therefore, in order to mitigate

this potential conflict, “humans must understand AGIs as fellow humans,” and AGIs must be

“fully integrated in human society and culture as equal participants in all human institutions.”

Ultimately, then, “such equality will lead to harmony and flourishing because both, humans and

AGIs work for the continuation of a joint – instead of a separate – human society.”

In order to articulate an alternative viewpoint and raise some questions about Kleinau’s position,

I consider AGIs from the fictional viewpoint of the 1982 film Blade Runner. Following the film’s

lead, throughout this essay I refer to AGIs as “replicants;” replicants are embodied AGIs that

have been created on the model of humans, are able to perform the same jobs that humans

perform, and are similar enough that they could be mistaken for humans in everyday life.

Against Kleinau’s position outlined above, I argue that discrimination is rooted in the actually

existing social division of labor; that if replicants emerge within capitalist society, they will be

created to perform slave labor, leading to inevitable conflict; and that under capitalist conditions,

even if replicants were somehow granted full human rights, conflict would still be inevitable due

to the immanent tendencies of capitalism itself. Finally, I argue that flourishing cannot be

dependent on removing perceived differences between beings, because while replicants do not

yet exist, the Climate Crisis is a contemporary reality, and it cannot be resolved unless we

consider the problem of nonhuman flourishing.

Discrimination Is Rooted in the Division of Labor

There are good reasons to believe that discrimination is not just a matter of perception; following

the Marxist tradition, I claim that discrimination is often rooted in the objective differences

produced within societies that maintain hierarchical divisions of labor. From this point of view,

ideologies of discrimination tend to flourish as post-facto justifications of what is actually the

case within a society, and may even be created by leaders for the explicit purpose of justifying

particular divisions of labor. As an example of the latter, consider the allegory of the metals

found in Plato’s Republic; in the text, the character of Socrates proposes that political elites

should create an ideological myth to justify a particular division of labor:

“You are all brothers... all of you in the city. But when god made you, he used a mixture

of gold in the creation of those of you who were fit to be rulers, which is why they are the

most valuable. He used silver for those who were to be auxiliaries, and iron and bronze

for the farmers and the rest of the skilled workers.... If their own child is born with a

mixture of bronze or iron in him, they must feel no kind of pity for him, but give him the

position in society his nature deserves, driving him out to join the skilled workers or

farmers. On the other hand, any children from those groups born with a mixture of gold

or silver should be given recognition, and promoted either to the position of guardian or

to that of auxiliary. There is a prophecy, god tells them, that the end of the city will come

when iron or bronze becomes its guardian.” (Plato, 108)

Replicants Will Be Created as Labor-Saving Devices

If discrimination is rooted in the division of labor and real social differences, then before we

examine the problem of discrimination against replicants, we must first consider the social

conditions that are likely to produce replicants in the first place. If we assume that capitalism will

continue, and that replicants will be produced on the basis of contemporary technological

developments, then we can conclude that replicants will be created as labor-saving machines,

in the same way that current Artificial Intelligence tools aim at increasing productive capacity by

automating human cognitive labor. In other words, replicants will be created to perform slave

labor.

In a passage of the Grundrisse, Karl Marx describes the way that labor-saving machines used in

the capitalist production process appear as antagonistic “alien powers” from the viewpoint of

human workers:

[Once] adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes

through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an

automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its

most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set

in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting

of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are

cast merely as its conscious linkages.... [The machine’s] distinguishing characteristic is

not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker’s activity to the

object; this activity, rather, is posited in such a way that it merely transmits the machine’s

work, the machine’s action, on to the raw material – supervises it and guards against

interruptions. Not as with the instrument, which the worker animates and makes into his

organ with his skill and strength, and whose handling therefore depends on his virtuosity.

Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is

itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it

consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to

keep up its perpetual motion. The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of

activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and

not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by

their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s

consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the

power of the machine itself.

Following this logic, I claim that the film Blade Runner actually provides a reasonably accurate

reflection of capitalist societies, in which “the demand for men necessarily governs the

production of men, as of every other commodity.” (20, Marx/Milligan) Under capitalist conditions,

the same thing necessarily applies to the production of replicants. In Blade Runner, the head of

Tyrell corporation, like any good capitalist, is only interested in replicants as a source of profit:

“Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell, more human than human is our motto. Rachel is an

experiment, nothing more.” And in the film’s opening text crawl, the connection between slavery

and violent conlict is explicit:

Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into

the NEXUS phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a Replicant...

Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and

colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 compat team in an

Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth – under penalty of death.

Capitalism Leads to Inevitable Conflict

Let us suppose, however, that replicants are not slaves, but are instead granted equal rights

within the context of capitalist nation-states. In such a situation, conflict would still be inevitable,

because of the structure of capitalism itself. From the perspective of workers, there are two

forms of immanent conflict built into capitalism. In his early work his early Economic and

Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx describes the necessary antagonism between worker

and capitalist:

“Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker.

Victory goes necessarily to the capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker

then can the worker without the capitalist... Should supply [of workers] greatly exceed

demand, a section of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The worker’s

existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other

commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer. And the demand on which

the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.”

(19-20, Marx/Milligan)

Furthermore, antagonism also exists between workers themselves due to competition for jobs.

In his 1847 lectures to workers, later translated and published by Engels as “Wage Labour and

Capital”, Marx argues:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10,

or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold,

or twentyfold.... Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour

increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless.

He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither

physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors

press upon him from all sides.... [Urged] on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous

effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he

receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against

his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer

themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he

competes against himself as a member of the working class.... Machinery produces the

same effects, but upon a much larger scale... it throws workers upon the streets in great

masses; and as it becomes more highly developed and more productive it discards them

in additional though smaller numbers.”

On this basis, therefore, I claim that even if replicants were granted full human rights, conflict

and violence would still occur if capitalism and the division of labor continued. After all, capitalist

society already produces more workers than are strictly necessary for the continuation of the

capitalist economy, and it follows that the creation of replicants is likely to exacerbate that

problem. Thus, even without explicit group conflict between humans and replicants, the majority

of humans and replicants would not have the opportunity to flourish as long as they were

subject to the threat of starvation and beggary. Furthermore, reflection on the history of racism

should convince us that where the potential for group conflict exists, unscrupulous actors are

likely to encourage bigotry for economic or political gain. Therefore, I would suggest that if one

is seriously interested in the possibility of humans and replicants flourishing in the future, we

would first need to face and overcome capitalism, and the current structural conditions that

make human flourishing impossible.

Climate Change & Nonhuman Flourishing

At this point, we need to move away from speculation about replicants which do not yet exist.

Instead, we must consider the current Climate Crisis, along with the related Sixth Mass

Extinction event. Here, it becomes apparent that attempts to root flourishing in similarity fail,

because animals, plants, and ecosystems have very different needs from human beings.

Furthermore, resolving our ecological crises requires more than just changes in perspective,

since it is the logic of capital accumulation and economic growth that lie behind them, and this

logic is expressed in a global social totality that governs most human economic activity on the

planet. If we are serious about overcoming the Climate Crisis, we need to reorganize human

society to overcome capitalism on a global scale, and develop new forms of life that allow the

biosphere to flourish.

Although we do not yet know precisely what those forms of life are, I claim that the human body

provides a model for thinking about flourishing, once we comprehend that the human body itself

is always already radically alien and Other. This is so because, on the one hand, from the point

of view of consciousness, we can never really know our bodies and the vastly complex systems

that operate at every moment to sustain our lives. But beyond that, we are almost totally

ignorant of the reality that our guts contain vast ecosystems full of innumerable living beings,

and our continued survival as human organisms depends on the flourishing of those nonhuman

beings.

From the point of view of the biosphere, nonhuman living beings outside the body are not so

different from the nonhuman beings that live in our guts. We are all dependent on the biosphere,

and the biosphere itself is a system produced through the interactions of all living beings along

with the inorganic matter of the planet. Mature human individuals recognize that life and

consciousness depend on the body, and so learn to take care of it through developing good

habits and setting reasonable limits. In the same way, it is time to mature as a species, and

undergo a process of transformation that will allow us to create practices and forms of life that

allow the biosphere to flourish.

Perceptions will certainly change under such circumstances, but achieving this transformation is

not a matter of merely changing perspective, but of actually undergoing the difficult process of

working through the antagonisms of capitalism. Only on this basis is there a possibility of

creating a world where humans and the biosphere can flourish together; and in such a world, we

can imagine that perhaps replicants too might have the opportunity to flourish.

Bibliography

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Mutual Flourishing in a Human-Artificial Social Landscape.” The GCAS Review, 28 July 2022,

www.gcasreview.com/magazine-1/2022/7/28/jfaje80oecgos8ppx0haxldijgt6ed.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated by Martin Milligan.

Prometheus Books, Amherst, 1988.

Marx, Karl. "Effect of capitalist competition on the capitalist class, middle class and working

class." Wage Labour and Capital, the original 1891 pamphlet. Translated by Frederick Engels,

Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1993, 1999. Chapter 9. Marxists Internet Archive.

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Marx, Karl. "Fixed capital. Means of labour. Machine." Grundrisse. Translated by Martin

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“What Is the Sixth Mass Extinction and What Can We Do about It?” WWF, World Wildlife Fund,

www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-is-the-sixth-mass-extinction-and-what-can-we-do-about-it.

Accessed 25 Aug. 2023.

Photo Credit to Florian Haun