Virtual Authenticity

You are what you repeatedly do, so that's a sensible stance to have.
Not in the article (watching AI the movie doesn't count). Which books about it have you even read (and I don't mean books by or for humanitiesfags).

Now you are moving the goal-post, the CCP is a centralised communist party, aright.
Besides China will have to move out of capitalism in a few decades, because otherwise they would be destroyed by the dynastic wealth, like the west was.
If there's one thing you can say about the CCP it's that they are capable of not repeating other people's mistakes. If the Bourgeoisie revolts against Xi who allows the capitalist mode of production, on condition of political submission to the party, then they will get national Maoism.

As far as the west's participation on shaping the future goes, it's not going to play a role anywhere near the importance of the past. The Americans are too busy draining the republic for empire. They can't win wars because they corrupted their military-apparatus, where winning wars means loosing future business opportunities. The Europeans are self-destructing with Austerity. The most likely outcome is that the EU is going to become a province of Eurasia, and the US is going to be a local power.

Looking at the systemic drivers, the neo-liberal period was shaped by the off shoring production for cheap-labour, and this has removed allot of the pressure for driving technology towards labour-saving & productivity-enhancing configuration, because for capitalism lower wages are the same as more efficient production. You can find similarities with slave societies like the Roman empire, who were technologically advanced but also did not have a significant pressure to advance technology in the direction of labour-saving or productivity enhancing-devices, because the slaves were too convenient.
What Zizek fears about digitalisation, that it will become a mental-slave-chains, is as much of civilisation dead end, as historic slave societies.

With regards tot the "digital girls friend", well sorry but this does not seem realistic, go look at the power consumption of current "brain-services", which are trivial in comparison. I don't whether know there might be a second wave of tamagotchis , maybe as a replacement for imaginary friends for children, or maybe a girl friend simulator to train social skills for teens. To be honest i don't get why anybody is trying to make artificial human-intelligences, we already have billions of those.

I think you overestimate the extent of the CCP's felxibility. They now have a lot of billionaires admitted in their ranks and are largely aligning themselves with capitalist interests.

The west is certainly on the downtrend, but China's large amount of debt and still fledgling military might not be enough to secure it's place as a hegemon. Not impossible tho.

As for power consumption, power electricity costs are always going down and will continue to go down as more rewnable projects are implimented.

The same reason we fantasize about pygmalion and galatea in the first place.

The major problem with the Chinese Communist party is that they don't think enough about Digimon in light of 9/11 and how Pokemon is antisemitic tbh

the whole thesis I'm operating under is that a better vision or theoretical understanding among those in power wouldn't necessarily be revolutionary.

It's the other way around, the billionaires in the party are securing them self's party privileges, for the time when the financial ones evaporate.
Consider that money is a points system, and that China has another points system. If dynastic wealth uses the money-points system to drain effort from society, personal success for individuals will become easier via social credit points, than via collecting money-points. And because the new computer-based points system is more adaptable then the legacy money-points-system, there likely will be a shift with regards of capturing human effort. The material reality is about people modifying their behaviour based on the numbers and graphs they see on screens. Consider that this also reduces the vulnerability to financial instability that originates from outside of China.
That was one statue that came alive, and the power-supply was magic, i highly doubt that you actually considered the energy supply for this.

That's uh…a bit optimistic

I think your analysis of the situation in China somewhat ignores the reality of class antagonism.

The point is not that galatea came alive, but that we want her too. The cost may be high now, but that might not always be the case.

Appreciate you taking the time to write this out, although I am left a bit confused as to what idea you're ultimately trying to get across. I have a couple of problems though.

I disagree with the framing of this as a phenomena unique to AI and/or unique to capitalism. To me the more productive question would be, how are the relationships and love we have for other people, now in our present, able(if it all) to be manipulated to make us subservient to capital or whatever.

I don't see the distinction you're drawing between the old and the new. That story of galatea, isn't that how all love works in a way? When you meet someone new, you never see them as a full complete subject, you don't know anything about them so you idealize them, objectify them. Its only at a certain point that the object comes to life.

I'm surprised with all the references to movies with AI you didn't make one reference to the new Bladerunner, which makes this point well. Personally I think we're already in the shit. Wendy's twitter account is the attempt to make a brand that has a personal connection to you. More importantly, twitter and the other social media giants themselves mediate more and more of our interactions. There's no need to give us AI friends, when you can simply profit by owning the platforms people use to have any friends. It's like owning the air.

The contrasts between trump/bernie as different kinds of sincerity is good. I haven't seen that developed elsewhere, could be useful. However I do disagree, if it is what you're saying, that bernie is then not a true site of resistance against the ruling ideology. I am not a succdem, but bernie is someone that disturbs the neoliberal consensus, and is the closest in decades to actual class politics.

I agree, which is why I support zizek above and against the bad fisher influence in your writing. There's no fascinating substance to the internet itself, its just a faster way to communicate.

And that's the major problem. There's not any malevolent capitalist spirit that manipulates our relationships or immobilizes us with despair, our voice simply isn't loud enough.
sure, and it'll only remain impossible as long as the ideological landscape remains fractured. But again, that's a matter of doing the work of speaking over the wrong ideologies.
Well then zizek is one of these thinkers of great hubris. I can't give you the citation now but during some lecture he speaks about this at length and to paraphrase "The problem with stalin is not that he tried to put his theory into practice, he simply had the wrong theory".
How is it not an equally great hubris to allege things would NOT be different if a different vision had been in place?

I have to split this into two parts for length…

Continuing…

Of course! but this new meaning already has a name, its called communism. You've already named that we're in the shadow of the failure of Occupy here. There's a certain analysis subscribed to by people like mark fisher or nagle(who any 4channer thats been around before 2010 should have problems with), that Occupy was almost a revolutionary movement before the SJW vampires came to ruin it. Absolutely not true. Occupy failed because there was no positive left vision. Weeks after that was apparent was when idpol people started to proliferate. sjws don't detract from the movement, the movement fails to offer a program and then sjws move in to take over the vacant position.

IF i'm reading you correctly, then my answer is that no one is ever home. Not just for hypothetical AI but no one is ever home in people either. All there is, is an appearance that makes you fantasize that something is behind. But there's nothing there.

tl;dr - I wish mark fisher was still alive, so I could tell him to kill himself

What makes the story of Galatea unique is the place of creation within it, and that is also what is unique about our current situation in capitalism and technological development. I agree, all love is like that, which is what makes authentic love with a creation possible in the first place, theoretically.

Haven't seen it yet, still on my list.

AIs allow for targeted manipulation in a way that's much less expensive that manpower.

No I agree that bernie is a disturbance there, I'm just pointing out that that isn't necessarily because of his authenticity. What I'm warning against is the possibility that we might accept more state-ideology unexamined if he was president. But I am optomistic he could make a break from the past.

He is, but he's closer to the mark than most others who make the same mistake.

Because such a statement would not place privilige on the subject annunciating it. But, i wouldn't say a difference was impossible with a different vision, just unlikely.

I would say not necessarily. A materialist understanding of history tells us that the ideological content of revolutionary momvents is overdetermined, and does not privilige a certain ideology a priori. The movement which creates communism may have little direct connection with marx.

I don't think that's quite true. Sure, the fantasy of the person at home may never be accurate, but the complexity born from an authentic being is real. Something which is beyond our individual subjectivity.

Thank you for the well thought our response user, I appreciate it.

Subjectivity is at the point where no one is home. That's what's authentic in someone. It can't be any positive substance, because exactly in that case it could then be changed or manipulated by choice. There is an authentic core to a person but its not a positive, it's an absence of anything positive. Nothing is at home. Maybe that's why I don't see the fear in this idea of manipulation.

Love, an authentic connection with another person, is outside of my whims, i'm not able to freely control it. That's why no one else is able to control it either, it's universal.

Now, it is possible to use my love for someone against me to profit or whatever. But that happens now. Workers get their passports taken away and are threatened with never seeing their family again if they cause trouble for the bosses.

You are ignoring the material conditions, China cannot reach the imperialist stage of capitalism, because it lacks the domestic resources reserves for that.

The Chinese military runs off surplus generated by Chinese workers, key resources and fuel for weapons are imported, this means no belligerent foreign policy, this means no imperial super-profits for the Chinese bourgeoisie, so no means for bribing the military.

It's boxed in.

not really

Alternative energy forms and materials breakthroughs will change that

What does that even mean? There is no "best" way to respond to a person. Any attempt at building such a thing would be an obviously shallow and garbage imitation. It would fall into the uncanny valley the same way '00s CGI does. Real people don't respond to your emotional needs in a "way that best suit[s]" them. Real people are flawed and come into conflict over their emotional needs. This kind of robot is closer to an ideal therapist rather than a romantic partner.

Furthermore, what builds any kind of personal bond (whether romantic or not) is the way that people work through those conflicts to find a resolution that works for both of them as individuals and a unit. That includes fights but it also includes simple things like dividing the responsibilities. A robot that does whatever you need paradoxically doesn't fulfill the actual need here, which is to be in a relationship with a peer.

It's like Hegel said. Your sense of identity is possible only through seeing a peer and understanding them as an equal. (Somebody remember the term for this? I forget.) Giving people robot gfs is only going to drive people deeper into depression and alienation, and because they think it's the thing they need, they will have an extremely difficult time understanding why they're still unhappy.

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You could theoretically program a robot to come up with problems and then work through them in the way calculated to best sate our need to work through problems and come to an agreeable solution. You just have to take a broader, less instinctively obvious definition of emotional needs - the first generation may make uncanny valley mistakes, but you can always fix that in the second, or an OTA update that breaks half of them.

I say that not to imply that robots are going to be good, but to emphasise that the problems run deeper and are more disconcerting than a simple technical implementation problem. You can always move on and try to solve technical problems, if the problem is a philosophical or social one that's much harder.