I wrote 'ChatGPT Is a Bullshit Generator Waging Class War' in Feb 2023 i.e. 2 months after it was released. With the exception of a focus on datacentres, I'm not sure how far critique has advanced. We need a more radical vision of our alternatives ✊

VICE

ChatGPT Is a Bullshit Generator Waging Class War

ChatGPT isn't really new but simply an iteration of the class war that's been waged since the start of the industrial revolution.

I'm doing talk tomorrow for the Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing (LOCOS) seminar series at the University of Glasgow titled "Low Carbon Computing versus The Blackpilled Anthropocene"

Low Carbon Computing versus The Blackpilled Anthropocene

"This talk will characterise contemporary AI as the broken product of an already-broken system. While AI sucks more of everything into its cycle of simulated solutions, it diverts us from the underlying structural and environmental crises. By focusing on energy as the conjunction of materiality and hype at the heart of the AI question, the talk will outline 'decomputing' as possible response to technocratic nihilism. Decomputing combines degrowth and conviviality into a policy for post-collapse liveability, where the cybernetic may still find a place in support of the common good." ☝ Abstract for my talk at Umeå University's AI Policy Lab Day

AI Policy Lab Day 2025 – AI Policy Lab

The political-economy of generative AI seems to mark a wider systemic shift from the greenwashing of 'green growth' to the open nihilism of 'growth! screw the green!'.

"The number of people believing [AI] has a positive effect is outweighed by those who think it does not"

the Guardian

UK workers wary of AI despite Starmer’s push to increase uptake, survey finds

Exclusive: A third of those polled do not tell bosses about use of tools and half think AI threatens the social structure

The backlash is coming. Let's focus it on the power structures that created the underlying problems, not just on the shoddy tech.

AI isn't 'normal technology' any more than our political moment is 'business as usual'. What's significant about AI is the way it both reveals and amplifies the underlying dynamics of a system in total crisis.

Some notes against predictive analytics in child welfare. Your thoughts? - prediction from data is misguided positivism - the data is flaky at best - human-in-the-loop doesn't help - algorithms project social profiling - it's a cover for staff cuts - it forecloses alternatives