danmcquillan

Author of 'Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence' https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai

Researching technopolitics.

blog: http://danmcquillan.org/
book: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai

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Last Notes

2026-08-23 10:13:44 CEST

The collective noun for a swarm of North Sea jellyfish is 'sortirdunucleaire'.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/117/143/793/579/391/568/original/dad1893c67b294c9.png

2026-08-20 09:59:43 CEST

Attempts to govern AI fail because it's diagnostic of deeper changes in the order of things https://zenodo.org/records/19457404. Decomputing aims instead to decouple critical services from technocratic collapse. Next week I'll post the preprint 'Beyond AI: Infrastructuring the Common Good'.

2026-08-19 11:55:40 CEST

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/117/121/566/442/184/633/original/658dcd3d60c16296.jpg

2026-08-08 09:47:02 CEST

Dumping Big Tech isn't just a matter of personal politics or even of tech sovereignty (which is a con anway) it's a matter of survival. Big Tech is the latest flag bearer for civilisation-ending extractivism and all the delusions about progress that keep us addicted to it.

2026-07-31 17:57:55 CEST

AlphaFold was always bait-and-switch; now Google confirms it. A hyper-narrow bioinformatrics model with actual science bolted on whose guesses can be experimentally checked was never a licence for socially-applied slop at scale, but it's done its job. Effort transferred to LLMs.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/117/015/393/474/446/132/original/7aa70ba965470781.png

2026-07-27 13:22:54 CEST

Where is the university ethics committee that has stepped up to the plate and said "There's no ethical way to use Generative AI"?

2026-06-16 12:40:12 CEST

As media opinion increasingly tries to discredit data centre opposition for being reactionary populism, it's important for campaigns to squash any possible far right infiltration by explicitly declaring themselves as anti-racist and anti-fascist.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/759/353/419/388/333/original/39d728e9596d5bc5.png

2026-05-22 13:31:05 CEST

This seems like an important initiative. 'Archaeologists Resisting Far-Right Appropriation' https://archaeologistsrfa.wordpress.com/
(h/t today's 'Teaching Anti-Fascism' workshop at https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/teaching-anti-fascism-today-developing-shaping-practices)
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/617/993/982/370/887/original/c9219b8e4d6f6831.png

2026-05-07 15:33:36 CEST

I have a 4th position on AI (not sci-fi, not productive, not normal, but diagnostic of systemic collapse). More in 'AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum' - paper https://zenodo.org/records/19457404, video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0U2o5Ysms
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/533/527/428/283/707/original/e31062f6f34e3e9a.png

2026-05-01 08:53:09 CEST

The video is out from my Rogers Chair lecture at Western University in March:
'AI is a Morbid Symptom of the Interregnum' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0U2o5Ysms
(yes I did use an exploded view of a Gaggia espresso machine as a slide to accompany 'convivial tools')
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/497/997/806/706/046/original/b8bf91291d84d36e.png

2026-04-27 08:07:58 CEST

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@danmcquillan/116418724387191091
I posted my speaker notes from the opening plenary ('The Empire of Big Tech') and the afternoon panel ('Is This Technofascism?') https://danmcquillan.org/resisting_big_tech_empires.html
#note1l0f…umjq

2026-04-22 22:33:58 CEST

- reply

but realtime facial recognition isn't going to be at all racist apparently

2026-04-17 08:52:38 CEST

Looking forward to debating the contradictions of AI at 'Resisting Big Tech Empires' (Sat 25th). What's happening when $$$ is poured into extractive but failing tech? How is AI a diagnostic for the nihilistic turn in geopolitics? What can we do about it? https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/event/resisting-big-tech-empires/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/418/695/472/008/492/original/2313dd6e22b397f5.jpg

2026-04-06 08:58:37 CEST

Thesis: LLMs enact for everyone a version of what some disabled people have called 'technoableism' - a redemptive forcing to the norm via technical means, even though the underlying idea of 'normal' is an exclusionary, socially-constructed and based ultimately on 'productivity'

2026-04-02 14:45:14 CEST

Boycott Palantir. Boycott AI. Divert all AI investment into democratic planning for more doctors, nurses, care workers and teachers.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/335/151/932/365/250/original/c101ecd21ed4928d.png

2026-03-22 09:07:00 CET

We don't need sovereign hyperscale data centres because we don't want them or the shoddy tech that depends on them. What we do need is a democratic control of our energy and water resources that orients towards sustainability. Goodbye Thames Water, and take Anthropic with you!

2026-03-12 22:47:11 CET

My paper also focuses on AI's overlap with energy & water utilities but points the other way; at reclaiming them as resources for the common good. (Also: abolish AI). https://zenodo.org/records/18908530
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/218/380/415/347/275/original/f79450ddf5fe5de2.png
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2026-02-20 08:45:20 CET

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/116099073995983625
Seems that Big Tech is following the liberal-authoritarian playbook of using policy announcements to defuse opposition (c.f. Microsoft and Anthropic's recent statements about covering the electricity costs of data centres) while the 'monopoly of violence' is applied to any actual opposition.
#note1fc8…qdrk

2026-02-19 19:24:44 CET

"AI is a morbid symptom of the interregnum" https://danmcquillan.org/ai_is_a_morbid_symptom_of_the_interregnum.html [0/7]

2026-02-16 23:17:50 CET

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEek40YOoRC/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/082/616/211/333/659/original/e3a81fe583954f4e.png

2026-02-03 23:38:51 CET

Switching from Big Tech to Brit Tech just puts the toxic cocktail of AI in the hands of local oligarchs. AI sovereignty is a solutionist narrative that hides the structural splits in our social & technical arrangements. Resist AI, refuse authoritarianism, reclaim the common good.

2026-02-02 08:10:13 CET

Belatedly sharing this longer 'Resisting AI' interview with McMaster Uni which ranges across the politics of AI, the failure of the usual remedies, forms of self-organised resistance, moves towards decomputing, and a focus on the role of universities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NvamIMgpio
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/999/780/903/538/385/original/cc84fcbaefb1d2e6.png

2026-01-28 09:54:02 CET

There's a lot of talk of AI being anti-human, or at the very least anti-Humanities, but this is missing the point. The AI assemblage is fine with both people and pedagogies as long as they are docile. What AI is anti, and what it undermines, is any tendency to refuse or revolt.

2026-01-23 18:59:34 CET

- reply

I broadly agree - not so much with the rules of chess analogy but with the broader point about undermining any challenge to power. I just don't see how that was converted into an investment pitch for the $$$ spent on developing diffusion models. LLMs can at least make (false!) claims about productive efficiencies and flaunt the idea of AGI.

2026-01-23 13:19:18 CET

Question: what do AI companies claim that image models are for?
(As opposed to the slop, porn and fascist aesthetics they are actually used for...)

2026-01-21 14:29:19 CET

Amazing how capitulating to AI can be presented as bravely standing up to it. "Our new AI strategy puts Wikipedia’s humans first" https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/04/30/our-new-ai-strategy-puts-wikipedias-humans-first/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/933/322/449/552/082/original/d590d26ad84333da.png

2026-01-14 09:48:44 CET

While AI narratives present it as heralding some kind of endpoint, whether superintelligence or a more transcendent Singularity, it's more accurate to interpret it as a technology of interregnum; one that both reflects & amplifies destabilisation and authoritarian restructuring.

2026-01-11 08:32:30 CET

All the noise about alignment from the advocates of 'AI Safety' is completely specious because AI already aligns with the hierarchical dualisms that shape our society at the deepest levels, especially misogyny, racism and a contempt for nature.

2025-12-19 08:56:00 CET

Automatised metapolitics, coming soon to a uni near you.
'Texas universities deploy AI tools to review and rewrite how some courses discuss race and gender' https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/texas-universities-ai-course-audits/

2025-12-13 14:41:32 CET

Amazon Prime pulls AI-powered recaps after errors https://www.theverge.com/news/842978/amazon-prime-video-ai-fallout-recap but the NHS continues to pilot an AI discharge summary tool based on Palantir's system (referred to in these minutes as the FDP - Federated Data Platform) https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/federated-data-platform-check-and-challenge-group-minutes-and-action-notes-19-september-2025/ 😷💻☠️

2025-12-03 11:50:11 CET

I wonder if the European Commission's insistence on calling data centres 'AI factories' is a deliberate attempt to encourage Luddism and machine breaking? 🔨
(Think of the alternative social benefits that could be delivered with €2.6 billion...).
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/655/237/782/222/791/original/ebf313043a1e1849.png

2025-12-03 08:01:03 CET

In conversation with Andrés Saenz de Sicilia of The Philosopher journal as part of their 'AI and the Digital' series, covering reform, resistance, fascist resonances, (dis)passionate applications, system contamination and path dependency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEA05STn1k

2025-12-02 23:41:27 CET

If you think generative AI should be integrated into the classroom then you also think management consultancies should determine the future for higher education. Both are ethics-free forms of machinic optimisation based on reductive abstractions that strip out important context and relationships.

2025-12-01 13:50:29 CET

'Health minister says UK should cash in on NHS patient data - Zubir Ahmed says new central service for medical datasets should be leveraged for ‘benefit of Treasury coffers'' https://www.ft.com/content/0531e76b-a800-450f-8a10-ac5ada1b2695 - the State emulating social media's surveillance-to-monetisation pipeline.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/644/366/946/926/832/original/3a5a07e3adf0b5d2.png

2025-11-25 21:06:31 CET

My speaker notes & slides from today's panel on 'Resisting GenAI & Big Tech in Higher Education', co-organised with the Climate Justice Universities Union (CJUU). The full recording, slides and resources will be available soon via the CJUU site.
https://danmcquillan.org/resisting_genai_highered_cjuu.html
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2025-11-25 15:27:55 CET

Getting p-r-e-t-t-y tired of all the 'anthropologists' and 'critical designers' who are hopping on a human-centred-AI funding train while acting as the participation-washing front end for violent epistemologies

2025-11-21 15:47:11 CET

The calls to action from the parents:
1. Ban AI tools into the classroom, protect students and teachers from de-skilling
2. Resist not only direct financial relationships or contracts with AI providers, but any training they might offer.
https://neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/digital-future-or-risk-to-critical-thinking-skills-5-takeaways-as-malden-drafts-ai-strategy-for-schools/ ✊

2025-11-20 18:14:32 CET

TFW your publisher sends you an email encouraging you to opt-in to licensing your work to AI developers, and when the book in question is titled 'Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence'🤦‍♂️

2025-11-19 10:16:29 CET

The only solution to AI harms offered by the Irish Electoral Commission and Coimisiún na Meán (media regulator) yesterday was 'education' to which my response was "It's education that's under attack from AI right now!" https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/oireachtas-tv/video-archive/committees/10825/ (2:15:15 ff)

2025-10-18 20:42:42 CEST

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 ✊ https://www.vice.com/en/article/chatgpt-is-a-bullshit-generator-waging-class-war/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/396/637/986/345/700/original/f18ead5a5f2e9477.png

2025-10-15 10:50:32 CEST

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" https://danmcquillan.org/wim_locos_abstract.html

2025-10-10 21:54:30 CEST

"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 https://aipolicylab.se/2025/09/29/ai-policy-lab-day-2025/

2025-09-28 09:23:18 CEST

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!'.

2025-09-15 13:19:01 CEST

"The number of people believing [AI] has a positive effect is outweighed by those who think it does not" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/13/uk-workers-wary-of-ai-despite-starmers-push-to-increase-uptake-survey-finds
The backlash is coming. Let's focus it on the power structures that created the underlying problems, not just on the shoddy tech.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/208/032/197/658/133/original/e1550c54999f7212.png

2025-09-12 08:36:02 CEST

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.

2025-09-01 08:29:08 CEST

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

2025-08-26 12:51:45 CEST

UK can't afford to help old people with winter heating but wants to subsidise failing LLM industry just at the point everyone has started to realise their product is basically crap https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/23/uk-minister-peter-kyle-chatgpt-plus-openai-sam-altman

2025-08-08 16:07:44 CEST

Silicon Valley idiots try to 'prompt hack' the AI tools they're all using to secretly transcribe meetings and parties. 'They talk in a way that has the AI remembering key details. "One of the important things about me is X,” or “You should remember Y.” ' https://sfstandard.com/2025/08/05/ai-wearables-recording-devices/

2025-08-01 21:40:49 CEST

Really rather chuffed to see 'Resisting AI' pop up as a prop in an insta video takedown of techbros
https://instagram.com/p/DM0XtRcx5lN/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/955/204/011/665/191/original/61ff5bac781a0722.png

2025-07-22 08:41:21 CEST

'OpenAI signs deal with UK to find government uses for its models' https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/21/openai-signs-deal-with-uk-to-find-government-uses-for-its-models Neatly captures the abject state of technopolitics. We should start with people's basic needs then ask if LLMs are the most appropriate answer (guess what, they aren't!)
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/895/517/085/881/326/original/d9bcfa1b154fd4e8.png

2025-07-17 08:40:47 CEST

I posted the text of my talk on 'Decomputing as Resistance' https://danmcquillan.org/decomputing_as_resistance.html
It's a work-in-progress: comments welcome!

2025-07-16 10:57:21 CEST

Daron Acemoglu wrote in Prospect magazine that AI can be pro-worker and help cure cancer but only if we focus on domain-specific models. The magazine just printed my letter refuting his claims and his backward-looking embrace of thoughtless tech. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/views/letters/70471/letters-augustseptember-2025
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/862/049/483/869/968/original/88919f95feefb424.png

2025-07-05 18:50:29 CEST

"Nucleus gave us a report on which embryos were likely ...to grow into adults with above average cognitive abilities" .
The dashboard allows you to deselect an embryo with alleged genome indicators including ADHD, OCD, osteoarthritis, male-pattern baldness & allergies #eugenics
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/801/605/521/243/919/original/3018ed53bf2689c9.png

2025-06-29 19:06:31 CEST

"Skopje Pride participants demand ‘death to fascism, freedom to the people’"
https://globalvoices.org/2025/06/26/skopje-pride-participants-demand-death-to-fascism-freedom-to-the-people/

2025-06-27 08:04:47 CEST

Just out: 'Resisting the Techno-Fascist Takeover: Are We Ready for Decomputing?' https://berlinergazette.de/resisting-the-techno-fascist-takeover-are-we-ready-for-decomputing/ in which I diagnose DOGE as institutional cyberattack and argue that the way to stop it spreading is to revive an alternative technopolitics.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/753/815/182/755/286/original/41592dffa5db4afd.png

2025-06-25 09:08:42 CEST

Saying 'people get things wrong too' is making a false category comparison between embodied, relational beings and an instrument of manipulation that's been tuned to fool people.

2025-06-23 07:59:37 CEST

I've posted my seminar on 'The role of the university is to resist AI', which takes as its text Ivan Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality'. https://danmcquillan.org/cpct_seminar.html
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/731/136/306/536/368/original/ef4c7ef6d686d86c.png

2025-06-19 13:04:49 CEST

- reply

I spent a short amount of time around a group of Googlers years ago, when they were doing some pro bono help with a community tech hack event in Sarajevo; they had an intense group-think vibe, a shared mantra ('how do we make this project scale?') and a tightly-parameterised emotional range (always positive, enthisastic but not too much).

2025-06-19 12:41:59 CEST

- reply

probably depends on what happens to their brain while at Google

2025-06-10 11:33:20 CEST

Tomorrow, in-person and online: 'The role of the university is to resist AI'. Registration via https://gold-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/_i7utl7wRR2tlWMea4j6fQ#/registration
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/658/375/009/867/863/original/27edea9c7b8f1e50.png

2025-06-05 15:31:23 CEST

Call for Papers - The Politics of AI: Governance, Resistance, Alternatives https://www.criticalinfralab.net/preview/?id=1164
We invite proposals for our symposium that offer critical perspectives on AI & environment, AI & society, and the political economy of AI. Please share widely!

2025-05-27 23:13:55 CEST

- reply

Right, there's a lot of that about. And not only are they qualified to comment on the technology but on everything else about the world we will get to live in. Still, the journal is titled _critical_ AI so you might expect something different...

2025-05-27 22:53:39 CEST

Yes, I do find it weird that a journal titled 'critical AI' would choose to lead with an article by an Anthropic employee. (Even weirder, it's the same employee who posted about Claude snitching on you if try something 'egregiously immoral', although that was after publication)
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/581/779/603/405/112/original/b80ad042a6dd881c.png

2025-05-23 08:33:06 CEST

https://danmcquillan.org/cpct_abstract.html
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2025-05-20 19:24:54 CEST

Interesting stuff. "The new Foundation 'Expectation Fail' has just started their first call for projects against Tech Fascism. 10 "scores against tech fascism" can get 1500-7000 EUR each to work on this sadly very current topic". Details here: https://lnkd.in/eRmx58vK
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/541/314/302/518/725/original/4ac918d2cb05ca57.png

2025-05-16 12:59:18 CEST

Terrifying. "Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir UK, met Keir Starmer that day. “You could see in his eyes that he gets it - the will is there”". Also admits they recruit sociopaths if they're 'brilliant'. NB. Mosley is the grandson of Oswald Mosley. https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/palantir-boss-interview-keir-starmer-gets-ai

2025-05-05 15:25:10 CEST

'Questions for Anthropic (or any other LLM-pusher)'. Sharing the questions I prepared for a panel about Claude in education, in case they're useful to anyone else resisting the narrative of AI inevitability https://danmcquillan.org/questions_for_anthropic.html
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/455/421/025/263/368/original/cdb7b312da37dcdb.png

2025-04-17 10:30:38 CEST

Just a reminder that the corporation which proudly promotes its barely-concealed white supremacy on giant posters in the USA is the same company awarded £330m to run the NHS Federated Data Platform #PalantirOut
https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/1911766217129406544
https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/nhs-federated-data-platform/fdp-faqs/
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2025-04-17 09:14:24 CEST

Seems like a good time to be exploring ways out of our current technofascist trajectory. Come and join the discussion next week.
📅 Thu 24 Apr
⏰ 4 – 5pm
📍 Online via Zoom
🎟 https://edin.ac/40zUOao
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/352/061/098/834/832/original/7c5a852f0de1bc50.png

2025-04-16 13:11:43 CEST

The nonsense about 'agentic AI' is a diversion from the fact that AI has always been about removing agency from the rest of us.

2025-04-15 10:49:03 CEST

The Unstitching Datafication series starts tomorrow with Gavin Mueller's talk on 'Luddite Futures', and closes in July with mine on 'Decomputing as Resistance'. Eight great sessions on deconstructing and resisting today's tech supremacism https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/de/unstitching-datafication/
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2025-04-10 10:56:58 CEST

This sack of shit has taken the critique from 'Resisting AI' and turned it into a sales pitch: 'fascistic solutionism' ☑️ , 'constituent power' ☑️, 'states of exception' ☑️, necropolitics ☑️ -
"ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’ "
https://michiganadvance.com/2025/04/09/ice-director-envisions-amazon-like-mass-deportation-system-prime-but-with-human-beings/

2025-04-09 14:54:05 CEST

Going to be chatting 'decomputing' at an online BRAID seminar. All welcome!
📅 Thu 24 Apr
⏰ 4 – 5pm
📍 Online via Zoom
🎟 https://edin.ac/40zUOao
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/308/101/026/834/847/original/55bad286ffbb727a.png

2025-04-01 13:03:25 CEST

Here's the full version of 'Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right' https://danmcquillan.org/labours_ai_action_plan.html. Why an obsession with 'growth' is already paving the way for environmental harms and DOGE-like, public service-smashing eugenics here in the UK, and what we can do about it.

2025-03-30 13:20:13 CEST

Non-critical embrace of LLM 'reasoning' models is the scholasticism of idiots.

2025-03-27 16:29:32 CET

Happy to be quoted in 'Is AI Worth It? A Growing Number of Artiﬁcial Intelligence Skeptics Is Raising Doubts About a Utopian Future' https://archive.ph/gjmCY. The mag is delivered to SF's most exclusive neighborhoods - hope some VC chokes on their Chai Latte while reading it.
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2025-03-20 11:39:14 CET

Australian government: 'AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information'. https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/09/03/ai-worse-summarising-information-humans-government-trial/
UK government: 'Great, we'll use it to match medical conditions for Employment and Support Allowance claims!': https://www.gov.uk/algorithmic-transparency-records/dwp-employment-and-support-allowance-online-medical-matching#detailed-description
🤖 ☣️

2025-03-17 12:34:06 CET

AI weaponisation is dangerous not because AI is all-powerful but exactly because AI is a bit crap. It's doesn't deliver for socially useful production but it's great for violent destruction where collateral damage (false positives/confabulation) is seen as a bonus.

2025-02-28 13:11:51 CET

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mind you, 1936 seems pretty close to 'spirit of the times' https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/pointed-ads-trolling-elon-musk-appear-at-london-bus-stop-390196/

2025-02-28 11:53:26 CET

Big tech is Ransomware. They've stolen all our data and hold all our vital services in the Cloud and at their mercy. We keep paying, or they pull the plug on society. Now is the time for #decomputing

2025-02-20 17:44:41 CET

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"This means that the companies get to decide what is 'unacceptable' output from an LLM, which is a very political form of power. This doesn't just apply to obscene content but to historical facts and political ideas. In a world where the route to knowledge passes through LLMs, the definitions of what is 'normal' and 'acceptable' is entirely under the control of tech corporations".

2025-02-20 15:43:07 CET

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"Before we get to democratic data governance we should ask; do we even need to turn this situation into data? Are we just ‘seeing like a State’, and if so what are the alternative ways to assess and make decisions about what interventions are needed?"

2025-02-20 09:43:00 CET

I was interviewed by Diyar Saraçoğlu, translator of 'Yapay Zekâya Direnmek' (the Turkish edition of ‘Resisting AI’), for their series on The Political Construction of Artificial Intelligence https://danmcquillan.org/diyar_interview.html
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2025-02-19 10:22:13 CET

The problem is that this isn't confined to LinkedIn-slop. Musk's DOGE minions are doing exactly the same thing inside federal agencies. AI won't give a useful answer to a factual question, but it'll still give an answer no matter how conspiratorial or delusional the question is.
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2025-02-18 21:56:31 CET

There is no more tech policy, only technopolitics. The liberal rules-based order has past & power is uninterested in performing reforms. Advocating tech sustainability, regulation and inclusion makes us the enemy within, and we need to focus on movement building and resistance.

2025-02-18 12:36:47 CET

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fist bump 🤜 🤛 on the 'i fucking told you so'

2025-02-11 16:27:43 CET

If you needed any proof that 'public interest AI' is yet another Trojan Horse for big tech and liberal technocracy, it's this announcement.
https://fortune.com/2025/02/10/france-tech-companies-and-philanthropies-back-400-million-foundation-to-support-public-interest-ai/

2025-02-05 00:04:56 CET

When I wrote 'Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence' my publisher was told by distributors in the USA they wouldn't carry it because of the 'antifa' in the title. Seems ironic, given the takeover of their country by actual technofascism.

2025-02-02 10:02:29 CET

Uni of California Press says of a new volume: "The first book to draw a direct line between the datafication and prediction techniques of past eugenicists and today's often violent and extractive 'big data' regimes'". I say "Wtf? Read Resisting AI!" https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai"
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2025-01-20 08:46:19 CET

Today the Nerd Reich (as Gil Duran names it) comes to power in Trump's wake. In 'Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence' https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai I wrote about forms of resistance to technofascistic solutionism. Other worlds are still possible ✊
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2025-01-14 17:04:18 CET

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about that ball game...
'Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right' https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Labours-AI-Action-Plan-a-gift-to-the-far-right

2025-01-14 13:13:34 CET

New by me on Computer Weekly:
'Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right'
https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Labours-AI-Action-Plan-a-gift-to-the-far-right

2025-01-09 20:46:42 CET

subheader reads "optional for enterprise subscribers" 🤔
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2024-12-18 11:34:48 CET

'UK proposes letting tech firms use copyrighted work to train AI' https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/17/uk-proposes-letting-tech-firms-use-copyrighted-work-to-train-ai creatives won't be the last people sacrificed to this government's 'growth through AI' delusion

2024-12-12 23:44:14 CET

Friends of the Earth Ireland Call for an Immediate Moratorium on Data Centre Expansion https://www.friendsoftheearth.ie/news/new-ucc-research-reveals-alarming-impact-of-data-centres-on/ - backed by some solid research
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2024-12-03 13:54:57 CET

Hard to overstate the importance of this point. However shallow a fool like Musk might be, what we're seeing can't be explained away as simply a smash and grab for more corporate expropriation but needs to be understood in terms of ideology.
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2024-11-19 21:13:37 CET

My friend Helen Beetham is a very astute critic of AI. While primarily researching digital education, her substack posts are packed with sarcasm-loaded insights about the whole AI shit show. Uncompromising analysis plus bitter irony: https://helenbeetham.substack.com/

2024-11-13 07:57:50 CET

Under current conditions, data centres are the forward bases of authoritarianism.

2024-11-06 14:07:42 CET

I wrote 'Resisting AI' (subtitled 'An Anti-fascist approach to Artificial Intelligence') to help preempt the kind of convergence of far right politics and the tech sector that we are waking up to today. The struggle against fascistic solutionism continues. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai
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2024-10-20 09:24:50 CEST

Unlike actual clouds, which transport life-giving moisture from the seas to the land, the AI cloud sucks up scarce water resources. It shouldn't be called 'The Cloud' it should be called 'The Drought', and we should say "that large language model runs in The Drought" 🏜️