- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37134271
In this text I want to analyze the relationship of fascism and what is called “AI” these days. Is this “technology” that keeps being used to reshape the world around us (for better or worse but dominantly worse) in some way connected to fascism? Or is it just something fascists like to use? Is it neutral?
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When we think about fascism we often do that by looking at the actors: Evil individuals doing evil things for evil reasons.
“Sophisticated” “analysis”…
Is fascism with you in the room now?
At the risk of eating downvotes I’m just going to say this article is really dumb, and it’s a reactionary emotional piece with the same logic of a random twitter thread. Most of the argument boils down to “I hate companies” which is more of a problem with the system than AI, the technology.
Saying AI is fascist because “oh, fascists use them” can be applied to literally everything. My computer is fascist (it has an Nvidia GPU, a large company of whom I don’t support). My supermarket is fascist (it advertises products to extract value from poor labor workers, this is big supermarket putting a boot on us).
The boring unfortunate reality that OP doesn’t accept is that people use AI for simple reasons: it’s good at what it does and is getting really decent at writing code. The article is just a giant wall of text justifying witch hunting anyone who uses it, even those using local models that keeps your data private because that too is fascist and anyone using them to, say, find critical security issues (of which AI is finding many) is just a MAGA right winger loser that wants to kill us all. We’re right to attack them! Right? Right.
There’s a lot to be said about ethics, AI safety, and how companies shouldn’t be running rampant doing what they want. But if you’re just going to label the whole argument as “oh, AI is just fascist and everyone using it is evil” then there isn’t any discussion to be had.
That’s… not what it says though???
“AI” as we use the term today is build on fascist ideas. Is structurally supportive of fascist thinking.
That does not mean that every user of “AI” products is therefore a fascist. Some “AI”-users might even consider themselves antifascists. But by using these systems you are integrating inherently fascist logic into your thinking, into your mental apparatus. These systems force you to at least accept the fascist tendencies within “AI” systems as “normal” or “okay”.
I will grant though, it’s not very well-written and is mostly a safari through what a bunch of other people have written on the subject, with basically no structure underneath or connective tissue in-between.
But I do think there’s something there. Expediency, pragmatism, looking only at output and efficiency, acting like physical production is the only real thing and mental states or systemic social effects are just hippie nonsense… these are all values which are closely aligned with fascism. And whether or not you personally hold those as your values, when you use AI you are acting out those values. It can easily become second nature to apply that mindset elsewhere.
Edit: Or to stop thinking about what happens when you use it right where you intended to use it. Coding is never a mere logic puzzle, it’s always in pursuit of some human outcome in the real world. Moral questions do come up. They can be mundane ones, for sure, but that’s where discrimination starts, right? Look at the tremendous power of the concept of a gender binary. Nobody cares how anyone thinks of themselves, but they care which checkbox gets filled in, which group they’re placed in, which door they walk through. The little stuff is where it starts.
I think if I was gonna write something similar, I’d focus it on “AI and the dangers of expediency”, and illustrate the different failure modes, building up from technical to interpersonal to personal to cultural to policy.
Then the “and this is a well-lubricated slide into full-blown fascism” is the cherry on top, comparing the dynamics of what we’ve discussed so far to the personal, economic, and political beliefs of the recognizable figures of the “nerd reich”.
At that point, you can make up your own mind about whether AI “is a fascist artifact”, but you probably agree on the individual points that lead up to that question, which is the more important (but less clickbaity) part.
It feels to me like you don’t want people reading the article?
And your argumentation for not reading it is not really consistent. It can hardly be both overly emotional and a boring wall of text?
Also, fascism isn’t the same as a capitalist economy. At least on the tin, the latter is not contrary from having a democracy.
@popcar2 @HaraldvonBlauzahn Copernicus over here with the reading comprehension skills. Eat my downvote.
“everything I don’t like is fascist” is a thing. It’s why I hate the use of the term, even when it’s more appropriate.
I dont “understand” the “point” of this “summary”
They call fascism anything that generates progress.
It is what the text is about, so that you can - if you want so - go and read it yourself.
It is not a summary. I can’t read it for you, so if you chose not to read it, you might keep silence about the content. Clear?
AI is a pure product of fascism.
AI is built on massive data theft and mass surveillance, which can only happen with gigantic monopolistic Big Data corporations that have the wherewithal to carry out the theft and buy themselves the right politicians to do so in total impunity, or make themselves the indispensable partners of the fascist regime.
That’s the definition of fascism: state and private enterprise in cahoots.
And now AI is turning into a tool to repress the population and keep the regime in power.
AI is built on massive data theft
Where are all the “copyright infringment isn’t theft” people now lol…
Appropriating the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity - even when it’s free - and reselling it in the form of a LLM is also theft.
Clearly not, because people still have their culture and heritage. Theft requires taking something so that the victim no longer has it.
At least that was the dubious moral justification of pirates back in the day. (Not saying I don’t pirate, I just never justified it through word games.)
the theft
Copyright is a fascist concept if anything tbh. I get that people dislike AI but can we stop pretending copyright has any legitimacy whatsoever
Until those who use LLMs are compelled to use copyleft licenses due to the use of copylefted materials in training data, I don’t wanna hear it.
They took a tool that allowed us to fight Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, and fucking broke it.
This does not help free/libre software or creative commons works.
Its really strange when right-wing concepts get lumped in as to attack AI. It really seems counterintuitive.
There was a theft, it just wasn’t intellectual property. It was a theft of the commons.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
not quite. the frontier models get the most press but free open source local models are good. its where the future is and these big companies know it. its why they are trying to have them banned.
also, in the us, we indeed experiencing facism but what you stated is not the definition of facism. infact, state controlled enterprise is socialism
Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
Mussolini LITERALLY said that fascism could be corporatism because the state and corporations become one.
One could argument that Mussolini as the inventor of the word fascism knows best what he wanted to say with it, but at the same time do words and meanings change with time so… Complicated
Why Mussolini said it comes from it’s roots as a leftish political orientation and is quite good explained by reading the whole Wikipedia article to this topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fascism
its interesting you care what Mussolini says, i dont. i did post the merrism-webster definition. its pretty straight forward.
You people really are just a miserable bunch
From a purely aesthetical pov alone I’d say yes. AI always tries to produce things along normalized rules of beauty, text structure, etc.
But even if you discount all such things as opinion-based, I keep coming back to its political, social and environmental impact, since most of it does come from fascist USA, runs on its datacenters.
(and incidentally, searching for an article that breaks down such impact for, say, one vibe-coded app, proved to be impossible - all search results are about the hidden cost your company pays after publishing 😡)
Couple weeks ago I learned Zionism IS antisemitism.
