I was really confused by this comment, but I don't think it's just because of the Marxist analysis of the situation ('surplus value' of labor etc).

What's really confusing is the claim that there's already a huge labor surplus (so capital controls wages); wouldn't LLMs making labor less important be reinforcing the trend, not upending it?

Not saying I agree one way or the other, just want to get the argument straight.

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noosphr 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The reason why labor is weak relative to capital is that there is a huge number of somewhat fungible suppliers, viz. humans, and that they all need to work constantly to keep themselves alive.

If we assume that ai makes humans obsolete then you end up in a situation where your workforce is effectively perfectly unionised against you and the only thing you can do is choose which union you hire.

If you think you can bring them to the negotiation table by starving them all the providers are dozens to thousands of times bigger than you are.

This is a completely new dynamic that none of the business signing up for ai have ever seen before.

	▲	_alternator_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I see what you are saying now, but I still don't think it makes sense. Labor, in your analysis, is the LLM. It seems to me that when you take people out of the equation then you don't need to talk about unions and labor; that's a distraction. We talk about it as an input commodity used to create your product like, say, oil or sugar.