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danmcquillan

danmcquillan@kolektiva.social

<p>Author of &#39;Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence&#39; <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/r</span><span class="invisible">esisting-ai</span></a></p><p>Researching technopolitics.</p>

Posts

  • Post #4443275

    Dumping Big Tech isn&#39;t just a matter of personal politics or even of tech sovereignty (which is a con anway) it&#39;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.

  • Post #4136090

    Where is the university ethics committee that has stepped up to the plate and said &quot;There&#39;s no ethical way to use Generative AI&quot;?

  • Post #3332898

    As media opinion increasingly tries to discredit data centre opposition for being reactionary populism, it&#39;s important for campaigns to squash any possible far right infiltration by explicitly declaring themselves as anti-racist and anti-fascist.

  • Post #2531013

    Two factors dominate UK higher education right now: 1) mass redundancies, especially in subjects that emphasise critical thinking. 2) the growing pervasiveness of AI. This is what we call &amp;#39;technopolitics&amp;#39;.

  • Post #2315486

    Anyone seen a good analysis of colleague-skills https://archive.ph/uvqBx and anti-distillation https://officechai.com/ai/chinas-workers-are-weaponizing-ai-against-each-other-through-colleague-skill-files-and-fighting-back/? Seems like a &amp;#39;moral panic&amp;#39; that fuses legit fear of bosses replacing workers with hype about limited and hugely unreliable agentic AI.

  • Post #2281432

    IPPR recommends: &amp;quot;Deploying AI engineers to schools, hospitals ... to experiment with where AI can improve outcomes&amp;quot; - why not ask people already working there about outcomes? I&amp;#39;m betting &amp;#39;fix the leaking roof&amp;#39; and &amp;#39;stop making cuts&amp;#39; would come out ahead of &amp;#39;more AI please&amp;#39;)

  • Post #2281431

    Looking forward to debating the contradictions of AI at &amp;#39;Resisting Big Tech Empires&amp;#39; (Sat 25th). What&amp;#39;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/

  • Post #2281427

    My co-panellists on this BUP webinar will be Masoumeh Iran Mansouri, co-author of &amp;#39;How to be ‘anti-AI’ in the 21st century&amp;#39; https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/gpe/4/2/article-p185.xml, and Patrick Brodie, co-author of &amp;#39;From the Bog to the Cloud - Dependency and Eco-Modernity in Ireland&amp;#39; https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/from-the-bog-to-the-cloud

  • Post #2179100

    I have a 4th position on AI (not sci-fi, not productive, not normal, but diagnostic of systemic collapse). More in &amp;#39;AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum&amp;#39; - paper https://zenodo.org/records/19457404, video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0U2o5Ysms

  • Post #2157985

    &amp;quot;Sweden’s Tesla Blockade Is Spreading: dockworkers in all Swedish ports will refuse to offload Teslas, cleaning crews will no longer clean showrooms, and mechanics won’t fix charging points as the labor dispute rages on&amp;quot; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-tesla-strike-cleaners

  • Post #2064026

    The video is out from my Rogers Chair lecture at Western University in March: &amp;#39;AI is a Morbid Symptom of the Interregnum&amp;#39; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0U2o5Ysms (yes I did use an exploded view of a Gaggia espresso machine as a slide to accompany &amp;#39;convivial tools&amp;#39;)

  • Post #2021955

    RE: https://kolektiva.social/@danmcquillan/116418724387191091 I posted my speaker notes from the opening plenary (&amp;#39;The Empire of Big Tech&amp;#39;) and the afternoon panel (&amp;#39;Is This Technofascism?&amp;#39;) https://danmcquillan.org/resisting_big_tech_empires.html

  • Post #1978557

    Anthropic doomers peddling delusions about the dangers of superintelligent AI have collided with fascist dumbshits who think an all-powerful death machine is a great idea. So what. The people most harmed by these masculinist fantasies will always be civilians, women, children. ¡Que se vayan todos!

  • Post #1933895

    The opening statement here is jarring: &amp;quot;the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty&amp;quot; - we are supposed identify with some sense of concern, because what? The self-sovereign US Army is a force for good? &amp;#39;The Authoritarian Stack&amp;#39; https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/

  • Post #1905011

    Thanks to Mél Hogan for this wide ranging conversation about AI in which we cover simulation, shame, system collapse and even some hopeful ways forward. https://shows.acast.com/the-data-fix/episodes/simulation-with-dan-mcquillan

  • Post #1827363

    This week-long summer study session looks right on point: &amp;#39;Low-Tech, Luddism and Liberation: reclaiming technology for the collective good&amp;#39; https://www.nsuweb.org/circle-9-degrowth-and-exnovation/ Also family-friendly &amp;amp; includes documentary viewings, poetry readings, hiking excursions and music nights.

  • Post #1775451

    RE: https://kolektiva.social/@danmcquillan/116475171870358907 &amp;quot;Fascism doesn&amp;#39;t return as a tick list of characteristics. Fascism is a fluid and dynamic force which operates at the level of social desires before it appears as jackboots. We need to learn to sense it in our infrastructures as well as in our political discourse.&amp;quot;

  • Post #1497857

    Ever find it hard to get up to speed on a Friday morning? Here&amp;#39;s a Burmese punk version of Bella Ciao for you 🏴🔥 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddm5yNcuHPg

  • Post #1496213

    One of the lessons the Luddites learned the hard way, and the critical AI movement could avoid relearning, is that when it comes to the harmful social impacts of tech the state is NOT a neutral arbiter between private capital and the common people. 💻🔨 Recommended text 👇 &amp;#39;Writings of the Luddites&amp;#39; edited by Kevin Binfield

  • Post #1402993

    &amp;quot;So whatever problem AI attempts to solve becomes what philosopher Henri Bergson would call a ‘ready-made problem’ – a problem that is expressed as a function of things prior to itself that have already been turned into abstractions&amp;quot;. (&amp;#39;Resisting AI&amp;#39;, p43)

  • Post #1128038

    Just out: &amp;#39;Resisting the Techno-Fascist Takeover: Are We Ready for Decomputing?&amp;#39; 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.

  • Post #1128030

    I posted the text of my talk on &amp;#39;Decomputing as Resistance&amp;#39; https://danmcquillan.org/decomputing_as_resistance.html It&amp;#39;s a work-in-progress: comments welcome!

  • Post #1080787

    Really rather chuffed to see &amp;#39;Resisting AI&amp;#39; pop up as a prop in an insta video takedown of techbros https://instagram.com/p/DM0XtRcx5lN/

  • Post #1037137

    Apparently, collaborating with AI impairs unassisted performance because it optimises on short-term goals not long-term. The frame is the trick; you can&amp;#39;t actually &amp;#39;collaborate&amp;#39; with a synthetic token machine at all. Myth-making masquerading as critique ⚠️ https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

  • Post #1037136

    &amp;quot;The enrolment of AI in the management of these various crises produces ‘states of exception’ – forms of exclusion that render people vulnerable in an absolute sense&amp;quot;. &amp;#39;Resisting AI&amp;#39; p72 (https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai)

  • Post #1037135

    So many continuities between AI and the Major/Blair private finance initiative (PFI); outsource vital public infrastructure to corporations who provide a shoddy substitute and continue to charge you through the nose forever. ¡Ya basta!

  • Post #1001164

    AI* does more for the far right than boost disinformation; it sediments it structurally and institutionally through - algorithmic states of exception - eugenic solutionism - bureaucratic cruelty - diverting from structural solutions [*all current AI, not just the generative kind]

  • Post #994715

    The problem with having &amp;#39;AI Safety&amp;#39; advocates as partners or funders in campaigns to resist AI is that their higher truth supercedes people&amp;#39;s lived experience. It won&amp;#39;t end any better than Leninist entryism. AI doomers&amp;#39; commitments are closer to tech bros than to the rest of us.

  • Post #953165

    Thesis: LLMs enact for everyone a version of what some disabled people have called &#39;technoableism&#39; - a redemptive forcing to the norm via technical means, even though the underlying idea of &#39;normal&#39; is an exclusionary, socially-constructed and based ultimately on &#39;productivity&#39;

  • Post #929161

    Luddism is our literacy #AlLiteracyDay