Data accumulation and capital accumulation have led to the same outcome: growing inequality and the consolidation of monopoly corporate power.

But as the autonomization of capital that crowds out non-financial investments has a detrimental effect on productive sectors, so does the proliferation of AI content online. Researchers have pointed out that generating data out of synthetic data leads to dangerous distortions. Training large language models on their own output doesn’t work and may lead to ‘model collapse’, a degenerative process whereby, over time, models forget the true underlying data distribution, start hallucinating and producing nonsense.

Without a constant input of good quality data produced by humans, these language models cannot improve. The question is, who is going to feed well-written, factually correct, AI-free texts when an increasing number of people are offloading cognitive effort to artificial intelligence, and there is mounting evidence that human intelligence is declining?

The distinction between the consumer and the producer of information vanishes once their activity becomes data. To be online is to both consume and produce data, that is value. Users generate data through interactions which platforms monetize. This unpaid ‘labour’ is comparable to Marx’s labour power, as users produce value (data).▪️AI algorithms, cloud infrastructure, and digital platforms are the new means of production, and they are concentrated in very few hands.
Data extraction and collection is driven by the dictates of capital accumulation, which in turn drives capital to construct and rely upon a universe where everything is reduced to data. Since the data which is fed into machines has undergone a preliminary abstraction process, there is nothing to stop this data from being outcomes of previous cycles of artificial production of information through data. Data generate data that generate data and so on. Like interest-bearing capital, 'a mysterious and self-creating source of its own increase … self-valorising value, money-breeding money’, as Marx describes the process of financialization that autonomizes capital from its own support.
▪️Data accumulation and capital accumulation have led to the same outcome: growing inequality and the consolidation of monopoly corporate power.
But as the autonomization of capital that crowds out non-financial investments has a detrimental effect on productive sectors, so does the proliferation of AI content online. Several researchers have pointed out that generating data out of synthetic data leads to dangerous distortions. Training large language models on their own output doesn’t work and may lead to ‘model collapse’, a degenerative process whereby, over time, models forget the true underlying data distribution, start hallucinating and producing nonsense.
Without a constant input of good quality data produced by humans, these language models cannot improve. ▪️The question is, who is going to feed well-written, factually correct, AI-free texts when an increasing number of people are offloading cognitive effort to artificial intelligence, and there is mounting evidence that human intelligence is declining?

"I was led into an interrogation room, and they presented me with a document that was prepared and stamped in advance. They wouldn't let take a copy or photo, but it said that I was a threat to the security of the state.
It is really quite shocking. Well, not that shocking within the context of the EU and Romania. I believe this came from Brussels rather than Bucharest."