​AI and Capitalism: How can we turn their weapons against them?

When: June 7, 3035

Time: 4pm to 6pm
Where: (in peson) Alan Gilbert Building, Rm G01 161 Barry Street Carlton

Online: Link to be sent 8am on June 7th 2025.

Speakers: Jeff Xiong and Max Lane.

JEFF XIONG – How can socialists use AI to fight capitalism?
Will comment on strategic approaches for socialists and progressives engaging with Artificial Intelligence. Beyond identifying AI's inherent ideological leanings, we explore the opportunity to actively reshape AI's narrative capabilities. This involves embedding our own ideological frameworks, such as a Marxist perspective, to challenge dominant discourses and promote alternative viewpoints. AI emerges as a potent instrument for expanding the ideological reach of socialist movements. These strategic considerations make it necessary for the Left to critically harness AI's power, with further resources available for those wishing to explore practical applications.

MAX LANE – “The Battle of Ideas”: fighting ideological hegemony in late capitalism
In the third century of capitalism and the second century of imperialism, capitalism's ideological hegemony has deepened but is increasingly cracking on its edifice. Capitalism's ideological strength, like capitalism itself, stands on contradictions. Wifi, the internet, social media and even Artificial Intelligence are all tools invented under capitalism and used for strengthening capitalism. So too were newspapers, radio and television. A lesson of the history of the socialist movement is that it must answer capitalism's ideological hegemony with a serious battle of ideas. This means using all the tools created under capitalism to subvert its logic. A constant and systematic subversion of capitalism's "logic", irrationalities and lies also helps socialists organise. The organised propaganda work can be the scaffolding of a movement. While a socialist movement’s strength comes from organisation and mobilisation, what underpins that strengths is a shared clarity in understanding the world which also requires our own ideological machinery. But that is a big job and will require a big organisation.

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Jeff Xiong (Xiong Jie) is a researcher at the International Communication Research Institute, East China Normal University, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His expertise encompasses digital transformation and international communication with a current focus on sovereign AI and the digital sovereignty of the Global South. His publications include the Chinese translation of "Cybernetic Revolutionaries" and "A History of Agile in China," an industrial history research of China's ICT sector.

Max Lane is a member of the RED SPARK National Executive and has been centrally involved since its initial steps in 2022. He was previously active in the Socialist Workers Party/Democratic Socialist Party (1981-2007), including almost 15 years full-time from 1990 to 2007. In the DSP Max headed up Asia-Pacific solidarity work and sometimes served as Editor of Green Left Weekly and of Party Campaigner. In the 1980s he was active in solidarity with the Indonesian and Philippines democracy movements and during the 1990s, he was National Coordinator of Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. In 2024, in Dili, Max was awarded the Medal of Honour of Timor Leste for these contributions. He writes for red-spark.org on Australian politics, political theory and fighting imperialism and is author of several books on Indonesian history published by Verso, Penguin and Seagull books.