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SUMMARY:⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: 'Why We Fear AI' by Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer
DESCRIPTION:➡️ Virtual Meetup Link\nDiscord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite! \nFull schedule: victorgom.es/neoluddite \nIf you’re joining for the first time\, I’d suggest you read this before anything else for brief context: What the Luddites Really Fought Against by Richard Conniff.The only expectation is that you read the chapter(s) of the book that’s listed for that meeting. You’re still welcome to participate if you haven’t done the readings as long as you are mindful. For each chapter\, I’ve also noted some optional readings for context\, so I’d suggest checking those out rather than reading ahead in the book. And remember\, if you ever find yourself struggling with any of the readings or concepts\, reach out! Either directly to me over email or to the entire group over discord.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n“Blix and Glimmer take the reader on a deeply engaging\, funny\, and provocative tour through our deepest anxieties and darkest fantasies of an AI-dominated future. Why We Fear AI offers profound insight into how AI and capitalism today work in mutually reinforcing lockstep to deskill and devalue humans\, and what it will take to wake up from our worst AI nightmares and build a better world.” \n—Shannon Vallor\, author of The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking \nFears about AI tell us more about capitalism today than the technology of the future. \nWill AI come and take all our jobs? Will it dominate humanity\, hack the foundations of our civilization\, or even wipe humans off the face of the planet? All kinds of people seem to think so. From professors to billionaires\, from artists to fraudsters\, from journalists to the pope\, AI nightmares have gripped the popular imagination. \nWhy We Fear AI boldly asserts these fears are actually about capitalism\, reimagined as a kind of autonomous intelligent agent. \nIndustry insiders Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer dive into the dark\, twisted world of AI to demystify the many nightmares we have about it. They combine expertise in cognitive science and machine learning with political and economic analyses to cut through the hype and technobabble to show how fears about AI reflect different economic realities—from venture capitalists\, to engineers\, to artists\, to warehouse workers. Truly understanding the potential impacts of AI means confronting capitalism and class\, power and exploitation\, in concrete terms. Only then can we fight the real threats to our lives\, livelihoods\, and the planet\, instead of tilting at nightmare windmills. \nBlix and Glimmer argue that AI nightmares reveal the terrifying underbelly of our current society\, of capitalism and its violent ways of organizing our world in its image. If we simply let capitalism and tech billionaires run wild\, we can expect the worst: automated bureaucracies that protect the powerful and punish the poor; an ever-expanding surveillance apparatus; the cheapening of skills\, downward pressures on wages\, the expansion of insecure gig-work\, and crushing inequality. But that outcome is not inevitable\, however much capitalists may dream of it. Why We Fear AI points the way to a different and brighter future\, one in which our labor\, knowledge\, and technologies serve the people rather than capital. \n\nAbout THE AUTHORS\nHagen Blix is a New York City-based cognitive scientist whose research spans language\, artificial intelligence\, and political economy. \nIngeborg Glimmer is a tech worker and industry researcher in Germany working on machine learning. \nPRAISE\n\n\n\n\n\n\n“In this highly thoughtful book\, Blix and Glimmer delve deeply into the histories of AI\, capitalism and neoliberal bureaucracy. The result is disturbing and unsettling\, a provocative launchpad for resisting the apparent truths of AI that businesses and governments are so keen to impose on us.” —Nick Couldry\, coauthor of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back \n\n\n\n\n\n\nExcerpt\nAre AIs soon going to be all-powerful? Is the Terminator here\, is the Matrix coming? Should we be ready to nuke the data centers in humanity’s last stand against rogue AIs? Perhaps the questions are simply ludicrous to some\, but to others they have real urgency. Certainly\, the fears they raise resonate with many people. It is up to all of us what we make of this\, to understand the power of such stories. We must come up with our own interpretations that make sense out of our own experiences of capitalism and the ways in which it shapes technology. If we let those who profit from the status quo tell us what the stories are about\, and shape the narrative\, we risk tilting at windmills or even strengthening the very powers that already exploit us\, that already profit from oppression\, and that have already set us on a path towards climate catastrophe. With or without AI\, those powers are already spelling doom. If we’re concerned with the battle for the future\, we must be ready to fight\, not imaginary future AI overlords\, but the capitalist structure that already produces the things we fear.
URL:https://iffybooks.net/event/neo-luddite-may-14/
LOCATION:Iffy Books\, 404 S. 20th St.\, Philadelphia\, 19146\, United States
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