From My Father's Kitchen Table to a Boundless World - Part II: Dark Dawn
The Techno-Panopticon, the "Useless" Class, and the New Order of Slavery That Corporate-States Will Build
Look, Father, you and I had talked about the bright face of the coin, that beautiful dream in which we make technology the common reason of the people. But I saw that justified suspicion in your ever-uneasy, ever-vigilant, wise teacher's eyes. As you were refreshing our tea, you said: "Son, you tell it beautifully, but this world will not surrender so easily to that beauty. Tell me about the dark face of the matter too; let us talk amiably, openly..."
You are right, Father. Words alone don't sail a ship of cheese, and if we do not rise up today, artificial intelligence will become not a torch that liberates humanity but the most lethal, most flawless whip of enslavement in the hands of capitalism. Come now, let us each take a sip of that brewed tea and lay out on the table, in all its detail, the cold, frightening, but absolutely necessary-to-confront dark face of the coin, the terrifying dystopian world that artificial intelligence could create.
Sectoral Breakdowns: The Liquidation of Labor and the "Useless" Class
You know how they always say, "Machines came during the Industrial Revolution too, the weavers were left unemployed, but then factories opened and everyone found work there." This is the greatest lie of the capitalist rulers. The reason the AI revolution resembles no technological leap of the past is this: In the past, machines replaced human muscle power, and the human shifted to new sectors requiring mind power. Today, however, artificial intelligence directly targets the human mind, the capacity for analysis, and creativity.
If this technology remains in the hands of capitalism, let us discuss sector by sector how labor will be liquidated and how that terrifying "useless" class will turn into concrete examples:
1. Education and White-Collar Work: The Emptying of Classrooms and "Screen Babysitters"
Let us start directly with your own profession, education, my teacher. Do you know what the capitalist education ministries and giant technology companies will do to cut costs?
- Centralized AI Teachers: To free themselves from the millions of dollars in teacher salaries, insurance premiums, and pension burdens, a single giant software program will be developed. This artificial intelligence will deliver videos and interactive lessons customized to each child's psychology to all the children in the country at the same time.
- The Human Turned into a "Babysitter": Schools will no longer need wise, self-sacrificing teachers like you. The classrooms will only employ "screen babysitters," paid below even the minimum wage, who will prevent children from roughing each other up and help a child whose tablet has broken.
- The Liquidation of Bureaucracy and the Service Sector: Not just teachers; bankers, accountants, call-center workers, data analysts, and legal assistants... Eighty percent of the work of the white-collar workers in office plazas today will be done by a single AI agent within seconds and with zero errors. These people will wake up one morning and see that the diplomas they studied years for have become garbage.
2. Blue-Collar Work and Logistics: "Tireless" Warehouses, Driverless Roads
Let us come to the labor on the streets, in the factories, in the trucks. Logistics and production are the areas of "human cost" that hurt capitalism the most; because workers strike, get tired, and demand overtime.
- Driverless Trucks and Couriers: Truck driving, hauling, taxi driving, and courier work, today the source of livelihood for millions, will be handed over entirely to AI-powered autonomous vehicles. Fleets of driverless trucks, hauling goods day and night without sleep, without accidents, using fuel in the most efficient way, will overrun the roads. Millions of drivers will suddenly find themselves alone at the wheel and unemployed.
- Dark Factories and Robotic Warehouses: Think of the warehouses of giant companies like Amazon today, Father. They will turn off the lights inside; because the AI-operated robotic arms and conveyor belts have no need for light. Vast logistics centers will be built that hum away in pitch darkness day and night, in which not a single human works. Manufacturing labor will be wiped entirely off the face of the earth.
3. Dark Business Models: Algorithmic Bosses and Penny Slavery
So what will all these unemployed people do? Of course they will not disappear entirely; the system will force them into humiliating, precarious, and dark new business models in order to survive.
- The Algorithmic Boss (Dynamic Labor Control): At the head of the lucky minority who can find work, there will no longer be a human manager, Father. An AI application on your phone will be your boss. The application will give you second-long jobs. For example: "Clean the camera on that street, 5 cents for you." Through your phone's camera, it will track your facial expression, your heart rhythm, your speed. If you get tired and catch your breath for two minutes, your AI boss will instantly block your account. You will not even find a single counterpart to whom you can object or explain your troubles; before you there will be only a cold screen.
- Data-Mining Slavery (Click Farms): For artificial intelligence to work better, the billions of pieces of data in the world must be labeled by humans. In those dark ghettos outside the cities, millions of people will sit before screens 14 hours a day, clicking on images for pennies to teach the AI what is what. To feed the artificial intelligence, they will build their own slavery with their own hands.
4. The Ultimate Threat: The "Useless" Class That Even Capitalism Cannot Exploit
This is the most terrifying breaking point of Marx's theory, Father. Capitalism, by its very nature, exploits the worker, expropriates the surplus value the worker produces. But even to exploit the worker, it is compelled to need that worker in a factory.
Even the Luxury of Being Exploited Will Be Taken from Them: > In this dark future, billions of people will not even be able to be "a worker to be exploited" for capitalism. Because the AI-powered robot will in any case cost less than a human. The system will turn to these people and say, "I need neither your labor nor your mind, you are of no value to me."
Because these people have become a nothing for the system, in the eyes of the rulers there will also be no meaning to their survival. They will neither be able to form unions nor go on strike; because they will have no labor with which to halt the production line. This is the mass we call the "Useless Class," Father. Because they cannot participate in production, they will have no money to consume either; hunger, lack of shelter, and annihilation will be made the fate of this class.
This is the bitter reality of practical life, Father. Sector by sector, step by step, this danger that comes upon us is at our door. If we do not take ownership of technology away from this rapacious minority and nationalize it, the smart children you raised in those classrooms by working your fingers to the bone will be made slaves of the algorithms or the "leftovers" of the system.
Human Rights Breakdowns: The Techno-Panopticon and Digital Slavery
Look, Father, let us turn up the flame under that kettle a little more, because we have come to the most painful part of the coin, the part that strikes human dignity at its deepest: the Techno-Panopticon and Digital Slavery. You know how, when you taught history in class, you would talk about the famous "Panopticon" prison model; there is a single tower in the middle, all the cells see that tower but cannot see the guard inside it. The prisoners, in fear that they might be watched at any moment, become their own guards.
This is precisely what artificial intelligence has the power to do in the hands of capitalism: to turn the whole world into an open, wall-less Panopticon prison, Father. And this time the guard is not a human; it is a cold algorithm that never sleeps, never pities, never takes bribes, and is everywhere at all times.
Come, let us talk about how this digital slavery and these human rights breakdowns could paralyze our lives in the future, with very concrete, hair-raising examples:
1. Biometric Surveillance and "Emotion Fascism"
Today there are card systems or cameras in workplaces that monitor working hours, as you know. In the dark future, artificial intelligence will push this beneath your skin, down to your pupils.
- Pupil Tracking and Point Deductions: Let's say you are working in front of a screen to earn that survival score, Father. The micro-camera overhead will not just check whether you are working; it will examine how many milliseconds your pupil strayed from the screen, whether an expression of dissatisfaction (a micro-expression) appeared on your face while looking at the company logos on screen. The moment the AI detects that you are tired or angry at the system, it will make a cut from that day's food ration on the grounds of "a decline in productivity and loyalty."
- The Simulation of Happiness: People will be forced to live behind a mask of fake happiness to look agreeable to their robotic bosses. Crying, getting angry, getting tired will be seen as a "system error" and punished. The human's right to own their own emotions will be taken away.
2. "Pre-Crime" Algorithms and the Execution of Thought
In today's world, if you commit a crime or break the law, you are put on trial. In AI-powered techno-fascism, however, the system will not wait for you to commit a crime.
- Potential Dissident Analysis: Artificial intelligence will analyze your digital footprints, the books you read in the past, the encrypted messages you exchanged with your friends, and your pulse rate when you witnessed an injustice. Before you have even gone out into the street and uttered a single word, the system will decide that your "potential to rebel in the future is 87%."
- Preventive Isolation: One morning you will wake up and see that the door of your smart home has been locked from the outside and that your public-transit card has been canceled. A message will appear on the screen: "For the safety of society, you are temporarily in quarantine." There will be no court at which you can seek your rights, no prosecutor to whom you can explain your troubles; because the algorithm will have "mathematically" proven that you will commit a crime.
3. Social Credit and the Digital Caste System
Imagine the system that China is piloting in some regions today combined with savage capitalism, Father. Society will be divided into rigid classes by literal digital chains.
- Contact Risk: While walking on the street, you ran into an old friend whose score had been lowered by the system, who had been branded "untrustworthy," and you greeted each other. The cameras overhead will record this instantly. The artificial intelligence will whisper into your earpiece: "You made contact with a low-scoring individual. Your social credit has been reduced by 50 points." People will flee from one another so their scores do not drop; kinships, friendships, that neighborhood solidarity you always spoke of will end entirely.
- Silent and Bloodless Exile: What will happen when your score drops below a certain level, Father? No one will throw you in prison or fire a bullet at you. The system will slowly and insidiously push you out of life. Your child will not get a good education, the worst medicines at the hospital will be placed before you, at the market you will be allowed to buy only products near their expiration date. You will be physically alive but socially a "ghost."
4. The Transformation of Education into "Obedience Engineering"
Here let us come to that place that hurts you, to the schools, my teacher. Artificial intelligence will use two completely different software programs when educating the children of the capitalist elite and the children of the poor outside the walls.
- The Submission Program for the Poor: The AI teachers of the children in the ghetto regions will teach them only simple technical skills and flawless obedience to the system. The moment the software senses in the child's mind the slightest questioning, a philosophical curiosity, or an artistic inclination, it will delete that subject from the curriculum and steer the child toward a mechanical job.
- The Governance Program for the Elite: To the children in the wealthy ghettos inside the walls, on the other hand, accompanied by human teachers, the highest-level analytical capacities of artificial intelligence will be offered; they will be taught philosophy, strategy, and how to govern the world. Education will cease to be a bridge enabling movement between classes and will become an algorithmic seal that fixes the class chasm forever.
"This is digital slavery, Father. No iron whip is laid upon the human's back; algorithmic shackles are placed upon their mind, their emotions, and their sources of life. Human rights cease to be a universal declaration and turn into a subscription package that only those who behave as the system wishes can purchase."
It is very important that we can see this picture so clearly and fearlessly, Father. Because if we do not know how lethal the weapon in our enemy's hand is, we cannot know what kind of shield to build against it.
New Cultural Models: Corporate-States and Resource Fascism
Come, Father, I refreshed the tea; let us drink it hot. Now let us talk about that political and geographical collapse part of the coin, about how holding companies will turn into states and drag the world into a Resource Fascism.
In class you always reminded us of Marx's famous saying: "Capitalism cuts down the tree whose shadow it cannot sell." In this dark future, the holding companies that have the colossal computing power of artificial intelligence behind them will not merely cut down the tree; they will take the rivers, the wind, the soil, and even the very air we breathe into their own monopolies. There will no longer be states with borders and parliaments as we know them; there will be Corporate-States governed by artificial intelligence.
Let us detail with examples how this will turn into a concrete nightmare:
1. Corporate-States: "Subscription Packages" Replacing Citizenship
In this dark scenario, nation-states like Turkey, Germany, or America as we know them today will remain merely shells on paper, Father. Real power will pass into the hands of vast Mega-Corporations (Holdings) governed by AI algorithms.
Subscription-Based Life: You will no longer be the citizen of a country, Father, you will be a "subscriber to a company's big-data pool." If you provide data to that company's AI system or are a cheap worker in its ghettos, you will be given basic services. Your company ID card will take the place of your passport. To be expelled from a company's system will mean, in the literal sense, to be erased from the world.
The Culture of the Citadel and Outside the Walls: Cities will be split in two by sharp lines. Wall-enclosed, ultra-luxury "Citadel" zones will be built where AI cleans the air, autonomous vehicles hum along, and the techno-elite live. Outside the walls there will be vast slums where billions of "made-useless" people like us live, turned into garbage heaps, untouched by any public service. Two different worlds will live on a single planet.
2. Resource Fascism: Rivers Drained to Cool Data Centers
When people hear "artificial intelligence," abstract data floating in the air comes to mind, but the truth is not like that, Father. For that AI to process billions of pieces of data within seconds, it needs vast Data Centers, each the size of several football fields, and an unimaginable amount of energy and cooling water to run these centers.
The Usurpation of Rivers: Imagine, Father, the bed of that great river of your childhood, where the villager irrigated their field, is changed overnight. Why? Because the techno-elite behind the walls need that water to cool their AI supercomputers. Because the villager cannot irrigate their field, agriculture collapses, famine begins, but the corporate-state's autonomous drones stand guard over the riverbed. The people who protest are declared terrorists for "threatening global technological security."
Energy Wars and Green Colonialism: To feed the artificial intelligence, all the world's solar and wind energy sources will be seized. Vast solar panels will be installed in the deserts of Africa or the Middle East, but the electricity produced by those panels will be used not to light the local people's homes but to run the AI servers inside the walls. Resources will be usurped by weapons and force, at the command of the algorithms.
3. Artificial Famines: A Calorie Calculus in Exchange for Obedience
These corporatized governments will not see the inequality in the world's distribution of resources as an error; on the contrary, they will deliberately, willingly fan it to govern the masses, Father.
Algorithmic Famine Management: Artificial intelligence will calculate to the millimeter how much food the poor people outside the walls need. The aim will be not to feed everyone, but to keep the people too weak to rebel yet alive enough to serve the company. Bread, flour, clean water will turn into commercial reward mechanisms. If you obey the system, the artificial intelligence will allow the autonomous trucks carrying food into your neighborhood; if you are a dissident, those trucks will not pass down your street.
A Humanity Without Property and Robbed of Its Rights: For the people outside the walls, property will end entirely. People will live in rented containers at the mercy of the companies, in an environment where basic human rights (health, education, a clean environment) are completely suspended. Because the AI of these companies will also write the global legal system, it will be made technically impossible for a human to seek their rights against a corporate-state.
"This is the new cultural model they want to build, Father: a resource fascism in which whoever has money and technology is deified, and the remaining billions of people are either made to serve these gods or insidiously abandoned to hunger and want so they do not consume the gods' resources." In this dark world there will also no longer be states and governments as we know them, Father. The place of public mechanisms will be taken by vast Corporate-States (Mega-Corporations) whose boards are governed by artificial intelligence.
- Elitist Dystopia and Artificial Famines: The world will be divided into two definite classes: the "Techno-Elites" who hold technology and the algorithms and live in tremendous technological luxury in their wealthy ghettos (the Citadel), and the billions of poor fighting for survival outside the walls. To keep the masses under control, the corporate-states will deliberately fan the problems of hunger and shelter as structural weapons. Bread and shelter will be made the reward for showing absolute obedience to the system. Justice will be nothing but an algorithmic simulation that money can buy.
- Energy Fascism and the Sovereignty of the Weapon: To feed the AI's vast Data Centers and to sustain the comfort of the techno-elite, an unimaginable amount of energy and water will be needed. The system will seize all the rest of the world's resources by force of arms. While rivers, solar fields, and rare-earth elements are usurped only to feed this AI monster, billions of people in the other parts of the world will be condemned, in the literal sense, to darkness, thirst, and decay. Respect for human life will give way entirely to the sovereignty of power and brute force.
A Portrait of the Dark World: A Day in the Shadow of the Algorithm
Come, Father, our teas have cooled a bit, I refreshed them. Now I will not tell you to lean back and close your eyes; on the contrary, open your eyes wide. Because, in a way befitting your practical and realistic mind, let us bring before our eyes, minute by minute, in all its nakedness, the twenty-four hours of an ordinary person in this techno-fascist dystopia we have described, say a young Ali who graduated from one of your classes, that is, a Day in the Shadow of the Algorithm.
Let us set aside the ornate words and follow, step by step, that mechanical, soulless cycle from the moment Ali wakes that morning to the pillow he lays his head on at night:
06:00 – Biometric Sabotage and a Restricted Morning
Ali wakes, in one of those thousands of gray container homes outside the walls, to a sharp red LED light piercing into his eyes. There is no alarm sound, Father; because the artificial intelligence tracked his sleep stages and woke Ali at the second when the company would extract the highest efficiency.
- The First Report on the Screen: The moment Ali lifts his head, the AI's emotionless face appears on the cheap screen on the wall: "Good morning, Subscriber 417-Ali. Last night, in your sleep, you clenched your teeth against the system three times and your pulse rose. Suppressed-anger detection. Your social credit score has been reduced by 12 points."
- A Calorie and Water Penalty: Thirsty, Ali goes to the smart faucet in the kitchen. But only half a glass of water flows from the faucet, and it cuts off. The message on the screen is cold: "Due to your reduced score, your daily water ration has been restricted by 30%. Work productively to earn it." His breakfast, meanwhile, is nothing but a synthetic paste the system has deemed appropriate for him, containing only enough nutrients for him to survive.
08:00 – Silent Streets and the Fear of "Contagion"
Ali leaves the house and steps into the muddy, concrete-smelling streets outside the walls. The sky is gray; because the steam and smoke rising from the vast chimneys cooling the data centers inside the walls settle over this place. In the distance, the gleaming skyscrapers of the inner walls, with their AI-cleaned sky, are visible, but in between there are vast steel walls and autonomous armed drones.
- A Silent Subway Journey: Ali boards the autonomous workers' train. The car is packed, but inside there is a pitch-black silence, Father. No one speaks to anyone, no one looks into anyone's eyes. Do you know why? Because if the man next to you has a low score and the AI-powered camera overhead sees that you interacted with him, commiserated with him, it lowers your score too. Solidarity, friendship, even asking after someone is now an "algorithmic risk." Everyone is forced to look at the screen in their hand and put on a fake expression of contentment; because the camera is constantly scanning their facial muscles.
12:00 – A "Click" Shift Under the Algorithmic Boss
Ali arrives at that "Data Labeling Camp" inside a vast hangar, where thousands of people sit lined up side by side. This is the new-generation factory, Father. Ali has no manager, no foreman. The earpiece overhead is connected directly to the artificial intelligence.
- Penny and Second-Long Slavery: Hundreds of images per second drop onto the screen before Ali. To help the artificial intelligence see better, Ali must mark the objects in those images within seconds. The voice in the earpiece speaks constantly: "Your speed has dropped by 4%. If you go on at this rate, your dinner ration will be canceled."
- Eye Imprisonment: Ali's eye drifts for a moment from fatigue, he turns his head to the right for two seconds. A red flash bursts on the screen instantly: "Distraction! The eye-tracking system lost focus. All credits you have earned in the last hour have been erased." Ali cannot find a single human before him to object to, to say "I got tired, I was going to drink a glass of water." There is only cold software.
20:00 – A Synthetic Evening and Digital Opium
When Ali returns home in the evening, he is exhausted. He has the three-cent digital credit he earned scanned at the company distribution center in the neighborhood. In return, he is given a standard evening meal in a plastic container.
- The Death of Culture: Ali wants to drink tea, to dive into a deep conversation as you and I do, to read a book. But in the ghetto regions the printing of books is banned; because it is seen as "data pollution and a waste of paper." Art is finished. When he turns on the screen, the artificial intelligence offers him only algorithmic music and fake digital videos that will numb his mind, calm him, and prevent him from questioning.
- The Cell of Loneliness: Ali looks out the window. The spotlights of the autonomous police vehicles patrolling the street roam across the walls of the houses. Everyone trembles in their own little cell, in fear of how many points they will start tomorrow with. Humanity, crushed between the gears of the technology it itself created, is reduced to nothing but biological machines that merely breathe.
Closing and a Call to Awaken
This is how it is, my dear father, my wise friend, my beloved comrade... This nightmare scenario we have laid out on the table in all its nakedness is not merely a distant future's imagined fear; if we do not raise our voices today, it is that absolute reality that will knock tomorrow on the door of the Alis, of the children, of all of us. Artificial intelligence is not a neutral toy, Father; it is the highest, sharpest front of the class struggle. The gears of exploitation you always taught us about in class are today being fortified with the invisible algorithms of artificial intelligence. If we leave technology to the mercy of the holding companies, of those savage techno-elites, what awaits humanity is not liberation but the most flawless and darkest prison history has ever seen.
But this dark picture is not meant to drag us into despair; it is meant to shake us and bring us to our senses. We have not reached the end of the road; on the contrary, we are right at that great crossroads:
- Rejecting Artificial Borders and Divisions: We must completely reject the national borders, the passports, the artificial "social credit scores," and the competitive metrics that corporate-states use to enslave us and to make us flee from one another. Humanity, remembering how small a speck it is in this vast universe, must act as one and as a single whole, with its fragile but magnificent existence.
- Nationalizing Ownership and Governance: The solution is not to curse technology but to take ownership of it out of their hands. Like the factories, we must make the colossal computing power of artificial intelligence, the data centers, and the planning algorithms the common property of the people. The decisions must be made not by the companies' AI but by genuine people's assemblies, by producers and laborers who have the logistical support of artificial intelligence behind them.
- A New Form of Global Governance: If we as humanity do not awaken in a very short time and build those classless, borderless new collective models of governance that will run the world on the axis of "need and sharing" rather than profit, it will become impossible for us to stand in the way of this techno-fascism. The struggle is not a technical struggle; the struggle is over who will govern the future.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Father, for setting aside the ornate speeches and the bombast and asking me about this face of the coin too, amiably, openly, and for bringing my feet back to the ground. You did not merely teach me lessons in class; you showed me with your life how to stand upright against injustice, the sacred honesty of labor.
Now I hold those weary but hardworking hands of yours once more, tighter and warmer than ever. To sit across from each other and reason together like two old friends, to debate the world and the future passing them through that wise filter of yours, is for me one of the greatest sources of pride and happiness in this life. At this table you are not merely my father; in the struggle to tear away this darkness, in the building of those bright and boundless tomorrows, you are my most precious comrade, with whom I take immense joy in walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
Our tea is refreshed, Father, and that revolutionary hope within us will always stay fresh too. As long as we stand side by side, no algorithm will be able to seize humanity's dignity. How good it is that you exist, my dear father, how good it is that you are my comrade!
