I‘m citing this skeet to point at the thread above it. I think it is full of interesting points.

Googlers Against ICE ❤️✊

I'm so glad to see that the "there is no alternative to capitalism" crowd has finally found... two alternative futures for capitalism 🤷🤷🤷

Language models are not models of cognition. But they are (manipulated/fine-tuned) models of corpora. That's why we call them "Ideology as a thing that can pretend to be a person" in Why We Fear AI

Gosh, who could have seen that coming?!

There's a kind of intellectual malaise among a certain kind of socialist that just doesn't understand automation and I think probably comes from not having worked much on or around it. The prospect of AI as a fantasy capacity to automate labour and free us from drudgery I think corresponds to...

"In our book, Why We Fear AI, we argue that it is in fact precisely the error-prone and brittle nature of these systems that makes them work so well for political repression. 1/2

Libertaria has always been at war with Trumpopia

The morals: Warmed over oxbridge empire apologism

Just because shit is evil doesn't mean it's not stupid

The point of AI is not automation but wage depression.

The industrialized production of language produces a fast fashion-like business model, where rapid low quality output floods the market That's why I think debates around whether AI "works" missing the point; we have to argue about (against) capitalism, not debunk marketing claims

Thank you, Victor. I spent a few weeks on this. As usual, it’s always a negotiation with length. So a few other bon mots: 1. The admin has issued DOJ guidance to challenge state laws that would regulate AI www.wired.com/story/ai-sup...

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

Concentration camps: “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick."

Wage suppression so 5 billionaires can keep paying each other instead.

Societies are more than relations between people, there are recurrent patterns to these relations, and we call those structures. I think the same is true for some aspects of linguistic meaning, and language models traffic in some of those. That doesn't mean they have a mind or think (they don't)...

People have quite rightly pointed to the hidden labor of AI. Another thing that I think this points to: There is no path to AGI. The marginal utility of automating the last 5% or so is negligible, the profits are already taken

Some quite valid points in here about the need for socialists to have a positive sense of "worldmaking". But the idea that AI is a vessel for that seems quite bizarre to me, given how much it is (as the same essay points out), a tool that deeply embeds class power, and Taylorist deskilling

I actually agree with a lot of stuff in @evgenymorozov.bsky.social's follow-up essay (which, despite the snark, I liked a lot more than the first one)! And yet, I vehemently disagree on the role of AI as sketched in the essay.

Some quite valid points in here about the need for socialists to have a positive sense of "worldmaking". But the idea that AI is a vessel for that seems quite bizarre to me, given how much it is (as the same essay points out), a tool that deeply embeds class power, and Taylorist deskilling

There's actually a rational history to people saying "we don't actually know how & why AI works". But it's been getting twisted into suggesting we don't know how neural networks work, which is nonsense. What we don't understand are things about *language*. 1/n

Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Ch. 9: Machinery

"In our book, Why We Fear AI, we argue that it is in fact precisely the error-prone and brittle nature of these systems that makes them work so well for political repression. 1/2

you don’t say!!!! youtu.be/lp8SeaO_gTc?...

Unfortunately, these days the world of AI is largely dominated by anti-intellectualism. And so the AI-peddlers come along and claim that "language is solved", as if having gotten reasonably good at language modeling weren't making questions about language all the more acutely important. 5/n

It's no accident that the kind of utilitarianism that Bostrom peddled is attractive to the powerful. It's no accident that it's popular among certain AI folks. It's no accident that it's popular among techno-fascists. It lends itself to categorizing people according to their "usefulness"

„Taken together, Bach’s communications with Epstein reveal an entire architecture of thought increasingly common among Edge participants: biological hierarchy; racial destiny; gender determinism; genetic optimisation; population culling; fascism as efficiency.“

Important Update:

This is basically what happened to geology and the oil & gas industry with the rise of fracking. I hope geoscientists learn from this.

Just as the best salesmen never lie, and the best conmen truly believe their own stories, perhaps the best AI researchers must create their own deceivers and believe their own creations." (Why We Fear AI, p. 36) 9/9

There's actually a rational history to people saying "we don't actually know how & why AI works". But it's been getting twisted into suggesting we don't know how neural networks work, which is nonsense. What we don't understand are things about *language*. 1/n

Of course, Bannon wants to use the brown shirts to violently interfere in the midterm elections

Hey, this is *your* chance to pitch a review of 'Why We Fear AI' to Current Affairs! ;)

Hey, this is *your* chance to pitch a review of 'Why We Fear AI' to Current Affairs! ;)

I’m a little disappointed by some of the responses to this (not Matt’s, which I take to be plain wit). But there is obviously a long tradition of studying low culture, mass culture, kitsch, & etc., and we ignore this latest aesthetic category at our peril. To pretend otherwise is anti-intellectual.

Love this excerpt from China Miéville’s “A Spectre Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto”

What is Technofascism? This concept keeps circulating but what does it actually mean? I'm testing out a tentative definition and would love to hear feedback on it. medium.com/data-feminis...

Did someone say a thing about AI as the industrialized production of language and oversight?

Free speech absolutists, exhibit n+1

Did someone say a thing about AI as the industrialized production of language and oversight?

Of course, Bannon wants to use the brown shirts to violently interfere in the midterm elections

Brian Merchant, author of the excellent Blood in the Machine, on the best books, films, and TV shows that dealt with AI in 2025! 💡📚💙

Quick history of #climate denial

Marc Andreessen, author of the arguably fascist "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" also invests in germ theory denialists. "For capitalism, the worship of technology and anti-intellectualism are two sides of the same coin". These people aren't optimists or in favor of progress, they simply love power

Apple & Google removed ICE tracking apps in their app stores. TikTok reportedly suppressed videos criticizing ICE & the shooting of Alex Pretti. Meta blocked Facebook groups tracking ICE & links to a database of agents that the government wants to keep secret. Big Tech is enabling Trump's regime.

These people do not care if we die. This elite grows more hostile to the rest of us every day

Marc Andreessen, author of the arguably fascist "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" also invests in germ theory denialists. "For capitalism, the worship of technology and anti-intellectualism are two sides of the same coin". These people aren't optimists or in favor of progress, they simply love power