I think it comes down to communism. According to Marx's book "The Machine" the end game of communism is essentially an omnibenevolent AI. Marx thought eventually all forms of labor would be mechanised into a colossal machine that would run the world. Thus, the whole point of education is to train the geniuses in math, science, and technology in order to bring about this machine god. That's, in my opinion, why there is such a huge emphasis on those subjects in the Soviet system. All the other subjects are full of questions and speculation, and in general seem useless from that perspective once you believe you've reduced the aspirations of the humanities' longing for justice and truth to an engineering problem to solve.
That’s fascinating... and somewhat terrifying. Because it seems clear to me that it won’t require communism or totalitarianism to achieve that kind of endgame (or at least, to get really close to it).
Perhaps the communist/totalitarian/power-hungry nations of the world are sitting back and waiting for us in western nations to build such a system (think AWS, but 30 years from now). All they have to do is get complete control of it by one method or another, and then they’ve won.
One would think a proper national defense-in-depth mindset dictates carefully considering and planning for such a future.
"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"
I don't think it makes much sense to say this is a state of affairs Marx would want to see in a communist society; to be honest, I have no idea where you get the idea that Marx envisioned a totalizing AI controlling society from. The Fragment on Machines is highly debated and analyzed in Marxology, but it doesn't imply what you think it implies. Marx's description of communist society is actually quite the opposite (from his TGI):
>He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
Post-Marxist authors and other Marxists have quite a lot to say on machinery and totalization of society to administered control (which they view as a negative thing) - see Marcuse for instance.
Wouldn't having an omnibenevolent AI providing for everyone's needs free everyone from having to be a laborer, so anyone can choose to be one thing one day and another thing another day? I see my passage and yours working together.
From what I understand, Marx didn't see communism as subverting capitalism, but as the end result of capitalism. He just wanted to hasten the process along towards an outcome which he saw as already predetermined by economic forces.
