While in Western capitalist societies “artificial intelligence” appeared in the sphere of consumption (e.g. chatGPT…) with the immediate aim of looting personal data and, in the near future, applications in the tertiary sector (services, starting with public-order mechanisms), the Chinese state/capital is quietly and without fanfare going straight to the deep end: automation of industrial production.
The commercial port in Tianjin is the tenth largest on the planet, and more than 20 million containers pass through it every year. It was built in just 19 months in 2020–2021 (the first years of the hygienist terror campaign in the West…), and everything—gantry cranes, trucks—moves through automated processes and a 5G network that transfers all data. The result is that in Tianjin port a large container ship is unloaded in 45 minutes, while in the largest American port, in Long Beach, California, unloading the same ship takes 24 to 48 hours.
The electronic infrastructure is the work of Huawei, and the entire workflow in Tianjin is controlled by one control tower and 15 trained workers—compared with 80 who worked before full automation. (A few dozen more are responsible for network maintenance). If not a reduction in the volume of human labor, certainly a change in specializations.
For Chinese capitalism, automation/robotization through “artificial intelligence” is a goal in every sector: increasing labor productivity and reducing the final prices of commodities. Last July, Huawei’s “cloud” CEO Zhang Pingan unveiled Pangu, an “artificial intelligence” system for a wide range of applications. Speaking at the 6th “artificial intelligence” conference in Shanghai, Pingan made it clear (answering in his own way to ChatGPT): Pangu does not write poems, nor does it have time to engage with poetry. Its job is to become the foundation of every sector of life and to add value to all of them.
The 4th industrial revolution is already disruptive through the acceleration of capitalist valorization. And it is clear who the “engine drivers” are in this disruption/acceleration, and what the consequences are for the capitalisms that are losing ground…