(Christian Tieber hat eine deutsche Übersetzung des Textes angefertigt: “KI” als faschistisches Artefakt. Vielen Dank Christian!) (This is a bit of a merger of two talks I recently gave about fascism and AI. One was in German at the Cables Of Resistance conference, one in English at the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy. […]

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?

  • popcar2@programming.devEnglish
    3219·
    4 days ago

    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.

    • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
      221·
      4 days ago

      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.

      • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
        6·
        4 days ago

        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.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
      133·
      4 days ago

      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.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      57·
      4 days ago

      “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.