Artificial intelligence has become one of the most significant technological developments in the modern world. Many see it as a scientific revolution that will fundamentally transform human life, while others fear it as a threat to jobs, privacy, and even humanity itself.
But the question does not begin with whether artificial intelligence is good or evil; rather, it begins with the nature of the system within which it is developed, who owns this technology, for what purpose it is used, and in whose social class interests it operates.
Technological development in general, including artificial intelligence, can hold enormous potential to free human beings from arduous and repetitive work, reduce working hours, and increase productivity in a way that allows for improving everyone’s quality of life.
Karl Marx himself saw that the development of machinery and industrial production opened the door to overcoming scarcity and exhausting labor. He recognized that technology was capable of serving society as a whole if it were used rationally and fairly.
The problem, from a Marxist perspective, is not the technology itself, but rather the relations of production that control it. Under capitalism, technology is not primarily used to liberate human beings; instead, it is employed to maximize profits and increase capital accumulation. This is why artificial intelligence is often used today in ways that serve the interests of large corporations at the expense of workers and society.
The evidence is not theoretical but visible before us: Since the rise of generative AI tools between 2022 and 2024, tens of thousands of writers, designers, and translators have lost their contracts with companies—not because they are less competent, but because the algorithm is cheaper.
The company CNET replaced its journalists with AI models to write articles, followed by BuzzFeed and others. This is not progress but the transformation of intellectual production into a cheap commodity to increase profit margins.
Alienated intelligence
This phenomenon can be observed in several manifestations, including the dismissal of workers or the reduction of their wages through automation, increased surveillance of employees and their reduction to mere numbers governed by algorithms, the monopolization of data and knowledge by giant technology companies, and the concentration of wealth and technological power in the hands of a small number of global monopolies and their billionaire (or trillionaire) owners.
A worker in an Amazon warehouse, to take another example, does not face a human manager but rather an algorithm that measures performance by the second, determines the worker’s picking quota, and automatically issues termination warnings if productivity declines. This has been documented by journalists from The Verge and The Guardian in extensive reports on what is known as “algorithmic management.”
Instead of humanity controlling technology, human beings begin adapting to the rhythm of the machine, living to serve it rather than the other way around.
This reality is consistent with the Marxist analysis of imperialism and monopoly, according to which the continuous development of capitalism leads to the concentration of capital in the hands of a small minority that controls the economy, technology, and media. Consequently, artificial intelligence becomes part of a global monopolistic system instead of a means of improving the lives of all human beings.
Marxists also connect artificial intelligence to the concept of “alienation.” Under capitalism, the worker becomes separated from both their labor and its product, and this feeling intensifies with technological development as human beings are transformed into mere appendages of machines, algorithms, and digital systems.
Instead of humanity controlling technology, people begin adapting to the demands of the market and automated systems that govern the rhythm of their lives and work.
This is precisely the danger posed by complete reliance on artificial intelligence without self-development or the cultivation of critical thinking. It may lead human beings into a state of intellectual laziness and cognitive dependence. Through this, one can observe how major capitalist elites seek to turn technology into a tool that weakens individuals’ capacity for analysis and independent thought, serving the interests of a small minority of wealth and power holders at the expense of the peoples of the world, especially poor and marginalized communities.
AI conquers the world
But the issue is not limited to labor and economic exploitation; it also extends to the environment and natural resources. Modern artificial intelligence, especially large-scale models, requires massive data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity and water to cool servers, in addition to the extraction of rare minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and copper for manufacturing electronic chips.
Artificial intelligence cannot be understood separately from the geopolitical realities of its raw materials. Approximately 70% of the world’s cobalt—an essential mineral in the production of electronic chips and batteries—is extracted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Amnesty International has documented the use of child labor in these mines, where children under the age of 12 work in deadly conditions for only a few dollars a day, while the real profits flow through supply chains that end in the offices of Apple, Samsung, and Nvidia.
As for lithium, most of it is extracted from what is known as the “Lithium Triangle” in Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina, where extraction operations deplete groundwater in the Atacama Desert and displace Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands.
The picture is not much different when we speak about data. Large AI models are trained on data collected from users around the world without compensating them, and the resulting systems are then sold at prices that governments in the Global South cannot afford. Africa, South Asia, and Latin America export minerals, data, and human labor, while importing a monopolized product over which they have no control.
People and planet before profits
From a Marxist perspective, the question is not only whether artificial intelligence consumes vast resources; that’s a given. It is also: Why are these resources consumed? Who decides how they are used? And who bears the real cost of this consumption?
Marxists argue that capitalism treats nature merely as an open source of profit rather than as the essential foundation for sustaining human life. Production under capitalism is organized not according to the needs of society but according to the logic of profitability and competition.
As a result, enormous resources may be wasted on applications whose primary objective is increasing profits, such as targeted advertising, financial speculation, consumer surveillance, and corporate races toward monopoly, while millions of people suffer from shortages of water, electricity, and basic services.
This does not mean that communists reject technology or industrial development because of their energy consumption, since any broad technological development naturally requires resources.
Rather, Marxist criticism focuses on the chaotic and unplanned use of these resources, the subordination of technology to the logic of profit, the burden placed on poor peoples and workers to bear the costs of pollution and resource extraction, and the transformation of scientific progress into a monopolistic instrument rather than a collective possession of humanity.
As long as the value of technology is measured by the profits it generates rather than by what it contributes to humanity, the real question will not be, “How far will artificial intelligence develop? but rather, “Who will own this development, and who will pay its price?”
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