There are few things that so perfectly represent the capitalist mode of production as generative AI. It’s theft. It’s plagiarism. It’s an attack on labor. It destroys the environment. It produces junk. It’s harmful to consume. It concentrates wealth. In short, it’s a catastrophe for society.
@benlockwood Imagine that being supplanted by Tech Bros usurping vital #RootInfrastructure like #energy markets that provide for #DataCenters and #AI, leaving the 99% with even less, and the .01% wealthiest, going to an insurmountable .0001%... ... ...
@benlockwood You're exactly right. It's only good for AI company CEOs.
@drreid @benlockwood Not sure it’s a feature solely of capitalism. Are communist elite also in on it across the world?
@gdsherif @benlockwood I don't know if AI would have ever been invented by a non-capitalist society. At least not in it's current form. Because, I don't think the giant tech companies would exist in a non-capitalist society either. Think about the founders of Meta and Microsoft. Would they have dropped out of college to start their own companies under communism or socialism?
Oct 25, 2026, 8:45 AM@gdsherif @drreid @benlockwood
communist societies are just as susceptible to corruption, but not through the extent of massive generational wealth like capitalism is. If individuals take too much wealth and power its in the best intrests of the majority of the governing party to divest them of it and give it to the party, in a way that isn't true for a culture that celebrates greed and selfishness promoted by capitalism.
As per @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social , we want AI that works for 8 billion people, not 8 billionaires.
Oct 25, 2026, 7:55 AM@MrBerard @drreid @benlockwood @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy No, we want no ai for no one.
@benlockwood I agree with you, but what does “society” do? Embrace it in naïve excitement. Maybe we either have to live thru it or learn the hard way how overcome the TechBro feudalism.
@Linkshaender I think there are quite a few people not embracing it. And many communities are organizing to stop datacenter construction
@benlockwood Yes, I’m rooting for them. Short to mid term, they just don’t have political and societal leverage. Just look how easily our German government can be fooled into thinking that AI is the savior.
IMHO society will learn, after a stock crash or an accident that makes 2008 look like a kindergarten picnic.
In more than a few US states local governments have a lot of authority over what can be built where.
Public pressure is high and growing against allowing data centers to be built as the problems they bring to often rural communities becomes ever more widely known and letting local officials know in no uncertain terms.
@Linkshaender @benlockwood AIUI the overwhelming majority of society is not embracing “AI”, so much as having it imposed upon them. Too many accept it just as they’ve accepted many previous harmful defaults, not because of any positive association, but because they spend their time and attention on other things rather than looking for improvements on the defaults - and after decades of making computers provider-owned rather than user-owned I can’t say I blame them
1/
@Linkshaender @benlockwood So usage is artificially high because of imposed defaults, which is not an embrace. That the people entrusted with keeping society beneficial for its members are embracing it is a very different problem than society at large embracing it, and is itself a symptom of other problems we have let fester for decades
2/2
@Linkshaender @benlockwood misread that as “naïve excrement”, and,
@benlockwood Sounds like a correct assessment.
@benlockwood IMHO the next ten years will be a big migration away from all the ruined products and platforms we have become dependent on, and a journey of discovery to new alternatives for communicating with one another. It will be refreshing and I'm quite looking forward to it 😀
#byebyebillionaires #facetoface #opensource
So I did some looking - all these GPUs this Gold Rush is producing? Three years
In addition to all the other problems thus generated, we will need to handle a huge e-waste stream
@ecoscore @benlockwood@ecoevo.socia
ood@ecoevo.socia
I don't feel so optimistic; there have never been so many solitary or socially ostracised people.
And, gone are the days when anyone could start a conversation with an unknown traveller on a train. Nowadays trains are filled with eyeballs glued to TikTok screens.
What can we expect from these masses? Only Generation Z taking over the Bastille brings me hope.
So the envisioned lovely migration will probably be as thin a Nabataeans' desert caravan.
That said, I do appreciate your optimism.
Here's your elevator pitch on why #ai is bad @enriquericos
@SrRochardBunson @benlockwood ha! I faved it last night and thought it pretty much covers everything 👌 👌 Each issue can be unpacked for hours, but starting with a list is the way to go. Thank you both.
Aaron Swartz died for your sins.
@benlockwood
…it is a product with no process, and therefore obliterates human experience.
Also, extracting labour from the global South (to present as computational magic).
@benlockwood Plus, it undermines the free market and replaces it with a consumption-space controlled by a oligopoly.
@benlockwood I generally have a negative opinion of it. However, I am interested in the potential for it to reverse engineer proprietary software, and undermine the business model of software capitalism.
@cosmicexcursionist on the surface that seems like a good use, but really it just shifts software reliance from niche companies to the AI companies
Oct 25, 2026, 4:46 PM@benlockwood I see it all as a big Rorschach test, to see what Narcissists would do if their assholish ways had even fewer limitations and boundaries.
@benlockwood Indeed, yet I find asking myself:
Why anyone signs up for or uses 'their catastrophe-nurturing bros' stuff?
Why not engage+fund decentralized, community-driven tech/services?
Why not engage in villages setup #FOSS cloud stacks: #nextcloud, #matrix #officetools #immich, #jellyfin - PLUS: local #AI #LLM service.
Documentary, published by our national broadcaster a few weeks ago:
"the most dangerous companies in the world"
https://on.orf.at/video/14334766/die-gefaehrlichsten-firmen-der-welt-big-tech-1-2-der-aufstieg-der-datenkraken
yet schools push and use #ipads?
@benlockwood And it encloses and toll-gates the biggest commons to have ever existed, shared human-knowledge.
@benlockwood I would say that it is the ownership structure and the use to which it is put by its owners that is the real problem. The technology itself is the hard-won result of many decades of researchers.
