AI, Marx And Legal Issues On The Path To Abundance

We are told to believe the hype and sign up to the fourth industrial revolution, this one powered by artificial intelligence¹. We may not have much choice in the matter.

Karl Marx wrote in 1847, "The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist²." We do not know what Marx would have thought about artificial intelligence nor did we see his reaction to the relentless marketing of what some claim this new technology can do.

We can though assume that the amount of capital being invested into 'AI companies' would have caught his attention:

• In recent days, Mistral is reported to have raised €468 million in new equity capital (€600 million if you include new debt raised) at a valuation of €5.8 billion³. That is some going by the Paris-based enfant prodige: it had already raised €385 million at $2 billion in a December 2023 series A⁴; just six months before that, it raised $113 million at $260 million in a