robotocracy

Watching the Shadows

AI chatbots shill for repressive regimes

New research from Meta’s Oversight Board found commercial large language models (LLMs) from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, OpenAI and xAI are far less likely to criticize repressive leaders and governments. The research calls it “free speech infringements by proxy.” Apps and material produced by these generative AI tools could actively reproduce restrictions, including on political criticism. It’s unclear why these AI models are doing this—underscoring the need for companies to be transparent and build “human rights due diligence” into the process, before it’s too late. China, Thailand, Cambodia and Saudi Arabia topped the list of countries with the highest refusal rates when LLMs were prompted to create materials criticizing governments. (Photo: chinaworker.info)

Watching the Shadows

AI: geopolitics or abolition?

Nationwide protests against data centers and even demands to stop the AI race constitute a significant glimmer of hope as Artificial Intelligence colonizes every sphere of human existence with terrifying rapidity. The movement, however, faces potential pitfalls that could be fatal. The emergence of stochastic attacks on the AI bosses represents counter-productiveadventurism seemingly informed by an ugly primitivism. An equal but opposite threat is exploitation of the movement by elements that really have no critique of the technology at all, but only seek to see it advance under Chinese rather than American techno-oligarchs—specifically the cultish and reactionary “Party for Socialism & Liberation” (sic). PSL is indeed an instrument through which the rulers of China (and Russia) are attempting to groom oppositional forces in the US. This provides convenient fodder for propaganda that would portray any opposition to the AI economy as a tool of Beijing’s ambitions to global dominance of the industry. As struggles against data centers now emerge in places like the Philippines, it is critical that we take a Neither East Nor West position and repudiate the global divide-and-rule racket that is the essence of the state system. In Episode 338 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an uncompromising abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence. (Photo: Rachel Bujalski/Stop the AI Race)

Africa

Nigerian jihadists turn to AI

The technical prowess of jihadi groups in West Africa is well documented—from the use of surveillance and attack drones to Elon Musk’s Starlink and cryptocurrencies. The adoption of generative AI, then, should come as no surprise. New research details how the jihadist movement in Nigeria has become adept at using AI operationally in attack planning, weapons calibration, and the design of explosives. Initial training was delivered through transnational jihadist networks, but Nigerian groups now have dedicated AI teams staffed by trusted personnel drawn from senior operational and technical roles, including bomb-makers, gun specialists, and engineers. “Trial and error can kill you. AI gives you accuracy,” a recently demobilized ex-combatant explained to researchers at the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy (CASP). (Photo via TNH)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony! IV

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive order imposing a one-year moratorium or “pause” on new “hyperscale” data centers seems to be a ploy to undercut a more stringent measure passed by the state legislature. But it still represents an important victory—of course being met with outrage by the Trump regime. Monterey Park, Calif., has meanwhile become the first US city to impose an outright ban on data centers via ballot initiative. There is a growing municipal revolt against data centers in the Golden State—although Gov. Gavin Newsom is still wedded to the AI agenda, placing him in line with the Trump White House. The turn of public opinion is slowing expansion of the industry, which is a real sign of hope. The challenge is to translate this into a popular repudiation of artificial intelligence altogether, and build a movement for abolition. In Episode 337 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case. (Photo: Food & Water Watch via Waging Nonviolence)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony! III

At the UN’s Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa warned that artificial intelligence poses the threat of an “information Armageddon.” Scholars of critical theory perceive that online culture reproduces a “cycle of epistemic injustice” by fostering “organized stupidity” that fuels extremism and authoritarianism. And the same technology now implements the grim material application of this degraded intellectual climate, with a UN Human Rights Council study especially accusing Palantir of being part of an “economy of genocide” through its enabling of Israel’s AI-enhanced targeting in Gaza. Meanwhile, the pollution generated by the data centers that power AI is now “almost incomprehensible.” Despite all this, UNESCO in Geneva glibly called for a “safe and inclusive AI that benefits all,” and an openly boosteristic “AI for Good” confab was held alongside the Global Dialogue. The “anti-tech rebellion” against screens in school classrooms is a significant sign of hope, but the end of reading and death of literacy are already upon us. Moves toward greater regulation of AI are most significant as a catalyst for the conversation that needs to be had: how to launch an effective movement for abolition. In Episode 336 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case. (Image: CounterVortex, after JSCSR)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony! II

Digital technology continues to colonize every sphere of human activity with terrifying rapidity, and Artificial Intelligence portends the actual abolition of humanity. Even the United Nations’ belated and insufficient efforts to put a regulatory regime in place for AI acknowledge that humans face imminent “loss of control” over the technology. There are glimmers of hope, however: teachers engaged in practical resistance to the rollout of AI in school classrooms, and the nationwide protests against the proliferation of data centers. In New York City, the local Luddite Club just held a Summer of Ludd festival—aimed at getting people to disconnect from the digital pseudo-reality that recuperates our very alienation from itself, and to reclaim real life in the public parks and streets. In Episode 335 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a report from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. (Photo: CounterVortex at the Summer of Ludd, Tompkins Square Park, NYC)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony!

Voices from within the academy are now raising the alarm about the decline of literacy under the relentless assault of totalized digital immersion—finally catching up to what CounterVortex blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg has been saying for years (although sneering denialism about the problem remains fashionable). Worldwide, the humanities are being abandoned in favor of STEM, while social media overtakes “legacy media” as a source of “news”—or (as is more often the case) sinister propaganda. In Episode 333 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill takes stock of this grave and still under-appreciated threat to the survival of democracy and humanity itself—and looks for signs of practical resistance. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

Watching the Shadows

Rights groups call to end AI in warfare

More than 200 human rights groups and advocates issued a joint statement calling for an immediate halt to the use of artificial intelligence systems in military “kill chains,” warning that AI-accelerated warfare risks facilitating violations of international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law. The signatories said that claimed safeguards such as “human in the loop” mechanisms cannot prevent the lethal consequences of AI-accelerated targeting, but instead risk becoming a means of “rubber-stamping” killing at greatly accelerated speed and scale. (Image: Andrew West via Pixabay)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: The Space Trilogy revisited

CS Lewis is mainly seen as either a purveyor of goopy children’s literature or a Christian moralist fuddy-duddy. But Lewis’ Space Trilogy—fantastic literature for adults, or “philosophical science fiction”—also reveals him as a dystopian prophet in the tradition of Orwell. The first two books in the series, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, are a critique of space imperialism that anticipated the Avatar movies. But the final one, That Hideous Strength, is particularly relevant for our historical moment, as it anticipated rule by fascist tech bros with hubristic visions of remaking (or abolishing) humanity. In Episode 332of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg makes the case that Lewis offered a vital critique of technocracy and “transhumanism” that is now urgently needed, as humanity stands at the cusp of his worst nightmares. (Image via Diary of an Autodidact)

Watching the Shadows

AI: the case for abolition

Trump’s executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Ironically, it is AI company Anthropic that calls for a moratorium on development of the technology until its threats are assessed. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” raises critical points but still echoes the illusion that this technology, now threatening to develop its own powers of “recursive self-improvement,” can be effectively regulated. There are encouraging signs of worker pushback against replacement by AI, and an emerging anarchist critique of the technology. Of course the Trump regime is targeting critics for repression as “anti-tech extremists.” In Episode 331 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again calls for total abolition of AI, citing unacceptable threats to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds. (Image: Pixabay via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Ukrainian robots break through Russian lines

Ukrainian forces have captured a Russian position using only drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted, describing the operation as a milestone in the evolution of modern warfare. “For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms—UGVs and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and this operation was carried out without the participation of infantry and without losses on our side,” Zelensky said in a video statement. The video showed Zelensky speaking in a room full of various drones and UGVs. He did not give a precise location for the territory taken in the operation. (Photo via Nashaniva.com)

Planet Watch

Podcast: world revolution & the digital contradiction

Protests break out in Russia over the new internet restrictions imposed by the Putin regime, while social media and instant messaging have become the “new public square” for the Gen Z protests that have swept the planet over the past months. Exemplifying the identification with online culture, a pirate flag from a Japanese anime series has become the global emblem of the Gen Z resistance. The new youth social media bans in a growing number of countries are opposed by human rights and civil-liberties groups for good reason. Yet the dystopian side of digital technology becomes more apparent each day—from the climate impacts of data centers, to cynical attempts to sell nuclear power as “clean energy” (sic!) to meet the surging electricity demand, to the digital colonization of human consciousness. Protests are also emerging to the new techno-fascism, and this critique must be central to any true oppositional movement. In Episode 321 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg grapples with the contradiction. (Composite image via GIGA. Gen Z protesters in different countries use appropriated image from One Piece manga. Fair use rights asserted.)