Planet of the Robots: The Four Futures of AI

A mini documentary about four possible futures after capitalism in a world of increasing automation and Artificial Intelligence. This video is part of a collaboration with JT from Second Thought. Check out their video after this! The production of this video was made possible entirely by Patrons. Become a Patron if you want to make ambitious projects like this possible!

Check out my podcast 1Dime Radio (on all podcast platforms)

Automation under capitalism or Automation under socialism? The differences would be life changing and could manifest in various ways. How could automation impact our lives? Who will own the robots? In this video we explore four possible futures. However, these futures could intersect and we may not just get one of them, as some of the futures are highly related to each other and are already relevant to capitalist societies today. This video analyzes the relationship between automation, post-scarcity, climate change, and political economy using Peter Frase's book titled "Four Futures: Life After Capitalism" among other works.

Timestamp:
0:00 Intro
2:15 Automation and Ecology
7:30 Resource Scarcity vs Post-Scarcity
8:54 Exteriminism: Hierarchy with Scarcity
12:56 Rentism: Hierarchy with Abundance
18:52 Socialism: Egalitarianism with Scarcity
23:46 Communism: Egalitarianism with Abundance

Credits:
Written, Narrated, and Directed by 1Dime
Music by:
Electrosoul System (intro), LML, Rogue State + Jaybee (second song), Inertia (Third song), White Bat Audio/Karl Casey (The rest of the songs until the outro), and Astrophysics (outro song).

Sources and Further Reading:

Books:
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek
The Robots Are Coming! The Future of Jobs in the Age of Automation by Andrés Oppenheimer
The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment by Martin Ford
A World Without Work by Daniel Susskind
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani
The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Jeremy Rifkin
AI Superpowers by Kai Fu Lee
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
The People’s Republic of Walmart by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski

Articles:
Frey, Carl Benedikt, and Michael A. Osborne. "The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?." Technological forecasting and social change (2017)

Check out more 1Dime content:

About 1Dime (not One Dime):
1Dime is an educational channel dedicated to countering one dimensional thought by analyzing socio-political issues through the lens of theory, history, pop culture, and political economy.

[Dimee]

Big projects like this are usually not the best idea for small channels and the YouTube Algorithm gods usually do not reward production value or effort, only the frequency of uploads. You can help by supporting on Patreon and getting exclusive content or if you are not able to, watching my other videos also helps (:

Timestamps of the futures (Watch in 1080p!)
Exteriminism: Hierarchy with Scarcity 8:54
Rentism: Hierarchy with Abundance 12:56
Socialism: Egalitarianism with Scarcity 18:52
Communism: Egalitarianism with Abundance 23:46

[SecondThought]

Had a great time collaborating on this topic! Keep up the good work, your channel is excellent.

[YUGOPNIK]

HOW DO THE VISUALS KEEP GETTING BETTER EVERY TIME BRODER. Incredible video. Offended by the Cigar being depicted as a symbol of capitalism though, I'll have to talk to you about that my friend haha

[Gokanaru]

The 8bit sovietwave at the end brought such an upbeat vibe, nice of you to end on a positive note :]

[kyleholtzen]

So glad Second Thought collabbed with you, this was my first time hearing of you, and this is a great video with great production. Glad to see another good leftist content creator on the platform!

[bootstraphan]

IF we demand UBI, we MUST also DEMAND PRICE/RENT CONTROL!👍

UBI will ONLY WORK IF the government implements PRICE and RENT CONTROL... BOTH are needed to prevent the owner class from siphoning off any benefit the UBI would provide!

Great show!👍👍

[leavonfletcher]

I have started really looking forward to "Marxist Fridays" because of videos by Marxist Paul and Second Thought. I guess I will have to have to add you to the list. Subscribed!

[BeautifulEarthJa]

Came from Second Thought, nice to meet you.
I'd like to think of the PROMISE of automation rather than the THREAT of automation...in bringing on the fully automated luxury communism that we all need.

[DudyMoko]

Fantastic video. I've decided to completely change the trajectory of my life a couple years ago and dedicate my time and skills towards developing a solarpunk future that promotes human prosperity while also being prosperous to nature through machine-human collaboration.

[fish_birb]

Nobody's talking about the retrowave Soviet anthem in the end? That shit SLAPS bruh

[severdislike]

A rather blunted summary, "The higher the rate of automation in a system, the lower the capacity for human labor in an system." - Agriculture is by far the biggest observation of this, from going over 90% of the population being involved throughout the 1800's into the early 1900's to less than 1% of the population today.

[fallbrkgrl]

New sub, thanks to Second Thought.
I am of average intelligence, and have not studied the majority of the concepts in your video, so I do appreciate the way you break things down. Unfortunately, for a lot of folks, not being able to grasp even the basic concept of something like communism (and being brain washed), will keep a lot of people from even thinking that there is a better way.
I just wish we could get more people to realize that because there are more of us, that we can make the changes, we so desperately need to make, so that we don't have to work, until we die.

[zpettigrew]

My grandfather was Buckminster Fuller. He'd be quite proud of this video. Great job.

[gamesndrinks]

Second thought brought me here. I appreciate your video. These takes are awesome to ponder.

[midimusicforever]

I would argue that talk about 80% unemployment is underestimating the potential of AI. Once machines learn faster than humans, we will be irrelevant on the labor market.

[SatanasExMachina]

Omg. I love both of your channels. Got notifications for both videos and was excited, only to find out you both collabed on these! That is awesome. Keep up the great work.

[pokvirus]

Pop culture: We love cyberpunk because of the neons
This guy: Listen Here You Little Shit

[markvetter]

I have enjoyed Second Thoughts channel for a while, glad you did collaboration. Just subscribed, very solid content. Thanks.

[jedimindtrix]

Gene Rodenbarry with Star Trek did a good job with envisioning a blueprint for society in the future. A meritocracy with no need for cash with the ability to live extremely well, very similar to a luxury communism.
Edit: lol I typed this comment about 15 seconds before you brought up star trek. Pretty much as soon as I posted it, bam there it was on screen. 😂

[lyleevans]

Was looking forward to someone addressing the issues in the book 4 futures in video format. This did not disappoint. Thanks @1Dime and @secondthought