Abolish AI!!: Decomputing with Dan McQuillan

It’s sometimes easy to feel that dystopia is already upon us. But I left this week’s episode with Dan McQuillan feeling energized and excited — and ready to ABOLISH AI.

Dan is a previous guest of the Anti-Dystopians, a senior lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths University and the author of "Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” We talked about the state of AI adoption in the UK (spoiler alert: it’s bad), why the Starmer government so obsessed with AI, how AI is harming the environment and the planet and papering over the degradation of public services, infrastructure and community of neoliberalism. Most notably, we discussed Dan’s concept of ‘decomputing’ and how communities can resist the adoption of AI to build communities of care — and, you guessed it, why we should abolish AI.

Be sure to take a listen!

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Leaving Twitter? Follow me on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social.

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From the Episode

By Dan McQuillan

• Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence

• Past Anti-Dystopians Episode: The Anti-Fascist Approach to AI

• Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right

• AI will create a thousand Post Office scandals

Mentioned in the Episode

• The Anti-Dystopians Student’s Guide

• Palantir Boss Louis Mosley [grandson of infamous fascist leader Oswald Mosley]: Keir Starmer "Gets" AI, "You Could See In His Eyes"

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What I’m Reading

• Well, Well, Well: Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All

• Local and state officials are vying to host parts of a massive artificial intelligence project called Stargate, backed by OpenAI, even as some communities turn against data center development.

• ICE efforts in DC thwarted by solidarity

• OpenAI and the FDA Are Holding Talks About Using AI In Drug Evaluation

• Anthropic launches an AI chatbot plan for colleges and universities

• ICE raids have 'overwhelmed' coastal California communities

• Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk detained by ICE in viral video is released, thanks supporters and her union for organizing for her

• Why Pro-Palestine protesters are being sent to a for-profit ICE prison in rural Louisiana

• A letter from political prisoner, Mahmoud Khalil: To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction