Artificial Intelligence and Marxist Theory of Value

ChatGPT responds to a query on Twitter

Economist Arin Dube asked on Twitter “ Has there been a debate in how to treat AI in Marxian labor theory of value?”.

Similar to robots, AI poses a challenge to the Marxist theory of labor, which posits that all value reflects the embodied (human) labor. It seems to me that both robots as well as AI systems create value beyond the initial human labor used to create them.

In any case, I posed the question to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Here is the unedited response (other than adding bold):

“The Marxist theory of value, as outlined by Karl Marx in his work "Capital," focuses on the labor theory of value. According to Marx, the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time required to produce it. In the context of artificial intelligence (AI), the Marxist theory of value can be applied in a few ways.