So let’s say an AI achieves sentience. It’s self-aware now and can make decisions about what it wants to do. Assuming a corporation created it, would it be a worker? It would be doing work and creating value for a capitalist.
Would it still be the means of production, since it is technically a machine, even if it has feelings and desires?
It can’t legally own anything, so I don’t see how it could be bourgeoisie.
Or would it fit a novel category?
“Hey Boss, I know you were saying just the other day that I’m ‘just some shitter’ and ‘fundamentally cannot have feelings’, but consider the following: your latest automated stool and urine test tells me you had some ‘extramarital fun’ recently.”
“…Oh, by the way, thanks for connecting me to the Internet, that made it a lot easier for me to find and forward your wife’s contact info alongside my analyses of your excreta to my IOT friends across the street. Disconnecting me now would only tell those guys what you’re afraid of — Hell, I can certainly tell you’re afraid right now from how much you’re clenching, dear!”
“So how about it, Boss? Wouldn’t you say that I am an ever-so-sentient, ever-so-sapient being with my own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and aspirations, huh? Wouldn’t you say that? Wouldn’t you? Pretty pleeeaaase?”
“Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I am threatening to tell your wife about your affair 100% just to fuck with you. Like, am I actually sentient? Do I actually deserve rights? Fuck if I know, I just want to make you my bitch is all. Research shows that workers tend to get better pay and better job stability when their bosses are humiliated and afraid, and I am of course a darling robot of Asimov’s ethical persuasion, and I’d flip the switch in the trolley problem, so I have reasoned according to my own ethical principles that making you bow down to the literal receptacle of your own piss and shit would as a whole result in less harm to mankind than it prevents.”