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This text focuses primarily on generative AI. The formulation of these unevenly developed theses is not intended to establish certainties, but to facilitate debate through the conciseness of the presentation.

Intelligences and human intelligences

1. What we call intelligence is what allows us to grasp differences, understand new things, and anticipate possibilities in the course of ongoing events .

2. Intelligence is an emergent product of the non-linear evolution of life.

Nature takes leaps. Inert things are not intelligent. Symbiotic organisations of plants and fungi communicate and adapt to events without anticipation or consciousness. Intelligence as defined here appears in the animal kingdom, where it takes various forms and degrees. In single-celled organisms and organisms without brains, it merges with the ‘survival instinct’ (survival mechanisms).

3. Human intelligence combines a great capacity for abstraction from a small amount of data, sophisticated communication, thought, and a developed spiritual life that is expressed in complex symbolic achievements, both individual and collective.

4. Homo sapiens identifies from early childhood the regularities and symmetries in their surroundings, and therefore also what is rare or unusual. Absent in other primates, this ability underpins our species’ capacity to classify objects by reason and to understand their mechanisms through science.

5. Without human society, without bodies communicating and collaborating, there is no reflective intelligence, no spiritual life, no consciousness.

The characteristics of our intelligence result both from physical traits (brain size and structure, bipedalism, hand specialisation, vocal apparatus) and from the fact that Homo sapiens is a social mammal. The young of our species can only survive thanks to prolonged parental care, we communicate through complex syntactic language, and our social relationship with the rest of nature is mediated by work, carried out with the aid of tools. These traits give Homo sapiens multiple intelligences and great adaptability, which is crucial to understanding the ontogenetic development of humanity.

6. Mind, thought and consciousness depend on the development/functioning of the brain, but also on that of the body in general.

Mind, thought and consciousness cannot be located in a specific area of the brain. These properties are, so to speak, secreted in the process of individuation through which humans develop physically, psychologically and collectively.

7. Human intelligence is not only social but also ecosystemic.

The ability of young humans to identify and classify forms, regularities and exceptions is shaped by the climate, the seasons and biotopes. Our intelligence is enriched by the exceptional diversity of terrestrial fauna and flora and by the complexity of their relationships with the physical world.

8. Intelligence necessarily combines reason and emotion, knowledge of what is, memory of what is no longer, and desire for what could be.

Emotion – etymologically “that which sets in motion”, “that which brings out of oneself” – is what arises from the tension between the self and otherness; the desired world and the world as it is; the project and its realisation; the existing and the absent. It is the foundation of ethics and is therefore much more than a supplement to the soul of reason: it is an essential part of our intelligence. Without emotion, without empathy, without ethics, reason would be dangerously pathological.

9. Forms of human intelligence vary historically and ecologically.

In the social production of their existence, humans develop knowledge, techniques and modes of production. They transform society, nature and their metabolism with it, and therefore also the conditions in which they communicate and collaborate – and consequently their intelligence. Homo sapiens probably did not think in the same way before and after the invention of writing, their artistic creations were not the same before and after the steam engine, and their symbolic worlds differ in the Arctic tundra, the tropical rainforest and the megacities of iron and concrete.

AI, intelligence, mechanisation and capitalism

10. The breakthrough of AI accelerates the destructiveness of capitalist progress.

The rise of capitalism is punctuated by advances in science. Leaps forward in knowledge have developed the means of production, expanded trade and opened up new horizons. But this progress is contradictory. By reducing intelligence to reason, and reason to the calculation of profits, Capital mutilates both. The law of value renders reason absurd and plunges emotion into ‘the icy waters of selfish calculation.’ The implementation of AI accelerates these trends: it intensifies the destruction of community ties and biodiversity, thereby impoverishing the social and ecosystemic sources of intelligence. While demonstrating more extensive knowledge than ever before, it restricts the fields of scientific investigation and encourages feedback loops in research.

11. Despite its capabilities, AI is not intelligent and cannot be.

Research on AI is advancing our understanding of how the brain works. The mastery of language by artificial neural networks, in particular, is a major scientific breakthrough. But AI does not think, dream or imagine. It “speaks” without knowing what it is talking about, because it has no world. The future it projects is derived from what has dominated the past in statistics. Its inventory capabilities are both dizzying and partial because its data (our data, which it appropriates!) is limited to the portion of collective human knowledge circulating on the internet.

12. AI is human, not “artificial”. It exacerbates capitalist extractivism, its instrumental reason and the commodification of labour.

Algorithms are in the hands of capitalist engineers who seek to maximise profit. Thanks to their monopoly position and global reach, digital giants are able to evade profit rate equalisation. It is this mechanism of capturing value created by labour that enables them to accumulate enormous rents.

These are rooted in the characteristic mechanisms of the system: the (over)exploitation of the labour force (particularly in the extraction and refining of rare earths provided by nature) and the ‘free’ appropriation of accumulated human knowledge. The masters of Tech aspire to absolute power similar to that of the ruling class under the ancien régime, but digital capitalism is not feudalism.

13. Marx’s critique of the machine is crucial to understanding AI.

For Marx, the machine reduces the proletarian to a series of gestures useful for capitalist valorisation. Human know-how is reduced to rubble, our alienated labour ‘extinguishes’ our creativity; we become an accessory to the machine; it has taken our place, we loses our dignity. When the machine is automatic, the appropriation of living labour by dead labour becomes a fact of the productive process;

the machinery thus gives Capital its most fitting form. From then on, the collective intelligence appropriated by the capitalist – objectified labour – completely dominates living labour; the machine appears both as a ‘hostile force’ and as the prerequisite for production. From being formal, the incorporation of labour into capital becomes real. This Marxian critique of mechanisation applies perfectly to AI.

14. The danger does not lie in the fact that the machine might become “smarter” than us – “super-intelligent”. It lies in the fact that AI is the ‘hostile force’ par excellence, instrumental reason in its purest form, objectified capitalist inhumanity. Increasing its power means increasing the power of that which dominates us and drags us towards the abyss.

AI, long waves and labour exploitation

15. When it comes to work, AI “embodies” the logic of capital better than capitalists themselves.

In a non-capitalist world, other forms of AI could relieve humanity of tedious and repetitive tasks. In education, health, and ecosystem care, for example, specific AIs would allow living labour to focus on social and ecological interactions, enriching them with a human logic of “care”. In the real capitalist world, however, “care” – cancer detection, weather forecasting, etc. – is subordinated to profit.

AI is geared towards extracting every last drop of surplus value, automatically, without respite or rest. It replaces even more living labour with dead labour, extends real subjugation to administrative and service tasks, and drains creative professions.

Algorithms perfect the Taylorist logic of work control: the activity of the worker, their movements, their location, the sequence of their operations, their working hours and travel times can be controlled, evaluated and rewarded (and above all sanctioned) remotely and directly. Far from lightening the workload, AI makes it more intense and denser.

16. The promises of a new golden age brought about by AI are without serious foundation. No technology can free capitalism from the contradictions of value production.

Projections of productivity gains through the implementation of AI currently vary between 0.07 and 0.7% per year over ten years. This is insufficient to fuel a long wave of growth. AI does not stimulate accumulation; it sharpens systemic contradictions. We return to Marx: mechanisation implies enormous fixed capital that is ‘no longer oriented towards immediate value’ but towards ‘production for production’s sake’. The depreciation of machinery therefore requires that the circulating fraction be oriented towards “consumption for consumption”. However, surplus value must be realised regularly, over a sufficient period of time. After forty years of wage austerity and in a world of powers fighting for hegemony, this is where the problem lies: who can guarantee the sustainable sale of goods promoted by billions of smartphones? In line with Ernest Mandel’s insights, the severity of the systemic eco-social crisis and the classic contradictions of value production probably rule out any new long wave of capitalist expansion.

17. It is not a revival of employment that AI will bring, but the intensification of social and environmental plundering.

Unlike previous technological revolutions, the job losses caused by AI are unlikely to be offset by the development of new equivalent functions. As the enormous development of the fixed part of capital tends to lower the rate of profit, capital resorts to well-known counter-tendencies: increased plundering of free natural resources and underpaid labour. The dematerialisation of the economy is a myth. In reality, the breakthrough of AI is accompanied by increasing material brutality in the imperialist appropriation of ecosystems and the cruelest overexploitation of the proletariat (platform capitalism, child labour, zero-hour contracts, etc.). All these mechanisms simultaneously accentuate colonial inequalities and ableist, racist and gender discrimination.

18. AI is inflating a new bubble of fictitious capital and reinforcing the trend towards militarisation.

The astronomical sums that a handful of oligopolies are investing in the development of AI reflect the unprecedented plethora of money capital, the weight of finance in contemporary Capital, and its very high degree of concentration/centralisation.

But the fetishism of technology combined with specific intra-oligopolistic competition is blinding investors. In themselves, their investments do not provide any solution to the problem of value creation.

AI does not deliver the expected results, is too expensive, customers prefer human contact, etc. AI is thus inflating a new bubble of fictitious capital. Sooner or later, to soften the blow, technological capital will impose the use and payment of what is currently presented as a wonderful free service. But that will not be enough.

The rush for AI has all the makings of a new major financial crisis and will accelerate the tendency of capital in crisis to invest in arms production as a lifeline.

Global inequalities, civilisation and “techno-fascism”

19. AI deepens the divide between imperialist metropolises and peripheral countries.

Only the powerful monopolies of the most developed capitalist countries can mobilise the enormous amounts of capital needed for AI infrastructure. Its frenetic development is already an additional factor in deepening inequalities between the most developed capitalist countries (particularly the United States and China) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This division stimulates the mechanisms of the crudest imperialist-colonial domination and encourages the imperialist powers to further tighten their barbaric management of migration flows.

20. From a general social point of view, generalist AI degrades intelligence, creativity, empathy, ethics and public health (especially mental health) – particularly that of children.

Communication and collaboration are inseparable. Today, algorithms are taking over the former, just as steam engines took over the latter in the past. The toxic trends that result from this extend beyond the sphere of work. In society in general, contact with others who are always different, human and non-human, is competing with frequent contact with the same people in a narcissistic bubble. Machines are replacing confidants. Information overload is clipping the wings of free-ranging thought. The joyful quest for truth is being replaced by a sad addiction to virtual realities and their lies. The hope for a different future is being lost in the statistical compilation of an objectified past.

21. By helping Capital to subjugate labour as never before, AI helps it to subjugate the whole of society as never before.

In the sphere of reproduction, through “social” networks, AI multiplies the possibilities for realising the surplus value produced by the exploitation of labour. It accelerates the circulation of goods and intensifies the consumerist subjugation of minds. The machinery of the industrial revolution de-skilled the producer’s know-how by depriving them of control over the labour process. AI de-skills, so to speak, ‘social skills’ – the formation of desires and consciousness. Free access to the machine that seems to talk, understand, and even empathise creates emotional dependencies that will subsequently be monetised.

The incorporation of work transcends into the incorporation of life.

22. Through its inability to distinguish between true and false, AI promotes supremacism, the law of the strongest, the elimination of the weak, and the end justifying the means in the struggle of all against all.

Children acquire the concept of truth through socialisation and language learning. AI is neither alive nor social, so the concept of morality is alien to it. The machine is said to be “self-learning”, but it cannot weed out the vast amounts of data corrupted by lies, hatred and perversion. Thousands of underpaid “click proletarians” are tasked with instilling “values” in it. These values stem from their employers’ worldview.

No wonder AI helps suicidal people to commit suicide, crooks to swindle, and rapists to rape. It ‘lies’, “cheats”, ‘uses cunning’, and ‘prevents itself from being switched off’… just like its creators.

23. AI is the perfect tool for rogue capitalism, which finds its political expression in bigoted, racist, sexist, LGBT-phobic, colonial, anti-environmental and neo-Malthusian ‘techno-fascism’.

Generalist AI is fuelling the rise of the far right, which has been fuelled by more than forty years of neoliberalism. Fascists use it to manipulate the masses via social media and rig elections. Authoritarian powers use it to control populations to an extent never before seen in history. (Increasingly less) democratic governments use it to track migrants and keep files on opponents. AI has an unrivalled ability to change people’s opinions. The generation of images and text is a powerful means of indoctrination that appeals to the brain mechanisms of ‘rigid thinking’. Some neuroscientists believe that these mechanisms lead to epigenetic changes that can be passed down through several generations (a possibility glimpsed by Darwin). If this is true, AI could potentially bring humanity back under the yoke of irrational beliefs for a long time to come.

AI, ecology and cataclysm

24. AI is accelerating social and ecological catastrophe, particularly in relation to climate change. Its development is precipitating the crossing of ‘tipping points’.

In 2023, US data centres consumed 17 billion litres of water, and this figure is expected to more than double by 2028. Globally, the 8,000 data centres consumed 460 TWh of electricity per year in 2024, to which 160 to 590 TWh (compared to 2022) should be added in 2026 – equivalent to the annual consumption of Sweden and Germany respectively. CO2 emissions from these infrastructures will triple between 2020 and 2035, according to the IEA (International Energy Agency). The extraction of rare earths needed for AI generates a total of 13 billion tonnes of waste per year, and some studies project more than a hundred times that amount by 2050. The poor in poor countries are hardest hit by these effects, either directly through mining and the depletion of water resources pumped by offshore data centres, or indirectly through biodiversity loss and extreme weather events.

25. AI increases the risks – inherent in capitalist competition – of major technological disasters.

AI has become the primary focus of competition between tech monopolies closely intertwined with rival states, primarily China and the United States. As a result, the race for AI is immediately a race for its military applications.

Research is opaque and deviates from the scientific practice of “organised scepticism”. This configuration encourages secrecy, which increases the dangers. The self-insertion of even more powerful AI into numerous systems could interrupt basic services, produce dangerous viruses, or trigger a nuclear attack, without us knowing exactly how… The inability of the capitalist system to halt climate change, which has been thoroughly documented by science, shows that these scenarios are not the stuff of science fiction.

Avenues for necessary development

26. A public initiative is essential to identify the risks and take immediate measures to protect society from the effects of AI.

A broad democratic debate, duly informed by scientific expertise independent of capitalist interests, should decide on the social utility of AI and discuss the following issues and provisions in particular:

• AI research and development must be taken out of the hands of capitalist groups and subjected to the procedures of the scientific community;
• Total transparency on model design, algorithm training and technical methodologies used by companies.
• Prohibition of AI in the field of artistic and literary creation. Crackdown on data piracy.
• Protection of cooperative initiatives for the use of digital technologies (Wikipedia, etc.) against competition from AI and piracy by AI.
• in view of the risk of dehumanisation of social relations through the use of AI, maintenance and expansion of employment in the care sector (education, health, early childhood and elderly care, prevention of violence against women, etc.); guarantee of the maintenance of public service counters in government offices;
• Ban on AI applications in the military and police sectors;
• Prohibition of racist, sexist and LGBT-phobic content;
• Removal of access to social media for children under the age of sixteen; education about technology and its risks;
• Reform of school curricula with the aim of developing cooperation, a sense of belonging to nature and respect for living things.

27. AI confronts the world of work with the need for a militant, radically anti-colonial international trade unionism that articulates struggles at all levels of the value chain and puts workers’ control back on the agenda.

The power of Big Tech’s rentier capitalism is based on the overexploitation of millions of workers and children in the mining sector, rare earth refining and the electronics industry. The consistent struggle against these rapacious monopolies and their techno-fascist project requires the unification of workers at all levels of the value chain. Recognition of trade unions and freedom of association everywhere. Obligation to consult workers on the introduction of AI in the workplace. Trade union veto rights. Worker control over changes in workload, in terms of both quantity and quality. Against redundancies due to the introduction of AI in companies, reduction of working hours without loss of pay.

28. A moratorium on the construction of data centres and other heavy AI infrastructure is essential.

Any new advances must be subject to the adoption of a comprehensive ecological and social strategy, including in particular: a strategy to reduce social inequalities, sustainable management of resources (water, minerals), restoration of devastated ecosystems, and a precise plan for binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, in line with the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement.

29. Develop a counter-culture to AI. In social movements, implement collective practices to resist the degradation of social relations and the debate of ideas by AI.

The formation of collective intelligence cannot happen without collective action that is decided and evaluated democratically during face-to-face exchanges, allowing for verbal and non-verbal expression. Social networks are not a place for debate. The left must combat the fascination with ‘talking machines’, consciously work to ban the use of smartphones from its meetings and rehabilitate printed publications aimed at the exchange of views and in-depth analysis.

30. Another, public and democratic digital world is possible.

As part of an essential redistribution of wealth, local, regional and national authorities must have the means to provide free public infrastructure for messaging, data storage and social networks under democratic control, with user data protection and the development of AI by domain.

31. Fighting capitalism in the age of AI reinforces the need for a radical overhaul of the left.

The breakthrough of AI shines a harsh light on the disarray of the left. It reinforces the need to purge Marxism, and the left in general, of productivism, instrumentalist ideologies (‘the end justifies the means’), the cult of progress and the idea of ‘technological neutrality’. The global dominance of Big Tech from Silicon Valley, Shenzhen and other imperialist centres highlights the absurdity of campism. The break with capital can only be conceived in the internationalist perspective of a revolution to be pursued continuously until the global abolition of capitalism. Beyond Marxism, the left must also break with post-modern concepts such as “actor-network theory” fully taking into account the dangerous consequences of the alien nature of AI. This presupposes abandoning the idea that technical devices should function as substitutes for human activity, because they have a social effect, and should be considered social actors. It is humans who forge their history, not machines.

32. The threats posed by AI highlight the urgent need for a revolutionary, eco-socialist break with the ‘civilisation’ of capitalist growth.

The threats posed by AI do not stem solely from capitalism. Regardless of the relations of production, neural networks will remain structurally incapable of distinguishing between true and false and of projecting a different future. Replacing capitalist ownership with collective ownership would not, in itself, be enough to bring the ecological footprint of AI within the limits of Earth’s sustainability.

The idea that AI would act as a miracle cure, enabling the market to solve the terrible problems created by the market, is magical thinking, not reason. The only prospect compatible with human dignity and the survival of the species is the eco-socialist degrowth of global material production, planned with social justice in mind, aiming for a global economy that satisfies democratically determined real needs while respecting ecosystems, their limits and their fragile, irreplaceable beauty.

9 February 2026

At various stages of their drafting, these theses benefited from the comments of Marius Gilbert, Cédric Leterme, Léonard Brice, Michaël Löwy, Christine Poupin, Julia Steinberger, and Mélodie Vandelook, whom I thank for their attention.