Conversation

When I was in university, I did my fourth-year undergrad thesis on Russian literature. Specifically, the Image of the Machine in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russian Utopias and Dystopias.

A real page-turner, I assure you. And no, before you ask, I don't have a copy. And I'm not giving out my doxx so y'all can search my university for it under my deadname. If it were online, which I'm quite sure it is not.

Anyway, the point I came to was this: in the pre-revolutionary work, the image of the machine was as humanity's humble servant, freeing us to become as gods with our leisure time. In post-revolutionary work, the machine had evolved into the master, enslaving people to its needs for maintenance and supply.

And I got into some stuff about the psychology of Russians before and after the revolution as measured at the time (and those books were fun to locate!). That's not really relevant to today's discussion, so I'll leave it aside.

This obviously relates to my feelings about the current state of AI. We are living in what can reasonably be described as a dystopic present. And fittingly, the machine is become our master. We work free for its supply, and willingly sacrifice the planet and our own ability to survive to maintain it.

Is this a manifesto? In some ways, maybe. But it's really time that we thought about what we're doing, and what we want to do about it. Because the only way this stops is by us doing something about it. And the only power we have is our willingness to use the tools that corporations dangle in front of us to distract us while they rifle our pockets for loose data.

Or our unwillingness.

So be unwilling. Be noncompliant. We don't have to break laws to grind the machine down. We just have to refuse to feed it.