I am, happily, fairly ignorant of economics. Certainly of capitalist economics, which I generally view from a distance as some sort of nonsensical shamanic ritual designed to make a minority endlessly richer through vague incantations about ‘value’ which appeal only to those who decide what that word means. Still, underlying that vague impression there remains the assumption that within that realm of dark magic there is some form of internal logic. The money drifts in its endless trickle-up patterns through some self-defined gravitational pull, all roads leading up but at least, in theory, being fairly straight. Right now though I can find absolutely no way to maintain even that meagre sense of logic as I watch the SpaceX IPO roll out.
From the critical side the consensus on the insane (potential) valuations of AI companies has always been fairly inclined towards just calling it a Ponzi scheme of some sort. An endless money sink built on the credulous which, at some point, will collapse as the vibes turn sour and the bills come due. Even with that though the motivations were at least clear, people like Musk and Altman are grifters – very effective ones – selling the impression of progress wrapped around the reality of corruption and gain. However opportunist the narrative may have been the promise of an infinite, technological future was a fantasy to sell and one even the cynics could see the appeal of, even if they knew it to be nonsense. Integral to that though was the potential for technological progress to at least hint at some kind of progression, even if it wasn’t of the endless, exponential kind.
Traditionally technology has always flavoured the futuristic fantasy with just that. Atomic power certainly did; landing on the moon, the internet, the digitisation of society, agricultural industrialisation and technologisation – however doomed, ill applied, misrepresented or ultimately greed and power driven as those things may have been at times they were still redolent with promise. Technically and culturally the vibes attached to them suggested a future that could be radically different and radically better, even with the attendant dangers. Technology even when factored into power and profit plays still came with its own cache of potentials, of hope, of promise.
With companies like SpaceX however that small flame of optimism seems to be guttering to the point of almost going out. The rhetoric is the same – racism and greed aside Musk’s one true enthusiasm does seem to be for techno-futuristic fantasising – but the technology at the core of that daydreaming seems to be ever less relevant and ever less impactful.
No doubt there are still true believers out there, those who genuinely believe in the fully automated luxury future of life on Mars (or the Moon) but I think for most people cynicism is more prevalent. The progress offered now seems to be viewed less as an expansive new reality (as was the case with cultural perceptions of the atomic or digital ages) and more as an ongoing entrenchment of a socio-economic moment. The technologies of LLMs or satellite internet don’t seem to be perceived as radical new worlds but instead as reinforcements of exactly what we have. The vision not painted by nascent techno-miracles but by a sort of glorified call centre mentality, the erosion of human conditions to serve abstracted notions of profit, a dream enabled to a degree by new technologies but motivated solely by a familiar political and economic drive wearing the stolen clothes of futurism.
That idea isn’t new. Techno-negativists long ago looked at technology as a mechanism for power rather than a progressive potential in itself but even with that a carve out remained. Yes the looming technologies of any given time were being suborned to old power structures but nonetheless, in its innovative potentials, there lay space for counter-imaginaries – it could be reclaimed to more revolutionary, egalitarian or utopian purposes. I certainly know some people try to repeat that narrative now (is fully automated luxury communism still a thing?) but the conviction is definitely lacking. There is no Project Cybersyn for the LLM age, I’m not sure there’s even an Ian M. Banks vision of the Culture to be found which isn’t anchored in the relentless, regressive logic of technology as perpetuation rather than liberation. There’s just that grinding assumption of innovation as enforcement and the solutionism being a revelation of power rather than technological potential.
I’m aware of the criticisms towards this kind of thinking. Anti-AI voices, Leftists, Luddites – they’re all criticised for a lack of vision, an innate technonegativity which blinds them to the endless potentials of the AI moment as they fixate on the imagined perpetuation of old orders. We can see through the data centre push back though; the ever more obvious exploitation of workers, the extractive surveillance of young and old alike – on all fronts the ‘techno’ has grown far less relevant than the ‘solutionism’ and the wonder has been subsumed by cynicism. The marginal pursuit isn’t to be critical in this moment, it’s to have faith that technology as a progressive force has any seat left at the table of oligarchic re-entrenchment.
So where does that leave the cultural and material potentials of technology? Not gone completely, I’m sure. As rattled Leftists especially love to point out there’s plenty of genuinely impactful, even revolutionary potential in currently marginalised fields of research. Innovation as an ideologically malleable, motive force is far from spent but as the landscape is increasingly saturated with the enshittified, authoritarian and regressive visions of what it can enable there’s a definite darkness around the hopes for technological progress.
As with the term Artificial Intelligence itself I think that places us in a position where abandoning ship is perhaps the best option. Within the cultural imagination AI, like the US grounded notion of ‘technology’ itself, has been thoroughly captured and any reclaiming of the real underlying creations and innovations that have been ruthlessly mined to create a static, capitalist reality needs to begin with an act of creation itself. Terms like Degrowth and Decomputing both hint at that purpose, albeit both through negation rather than affirmation (in name if not intent) and more of the same may be needed. A new language for discussing technology, a new and nuanced understanding of what progress is happening and what may be done with it is a way out of the fake solutionism of the tech giants. If you have any faith in technology as a solution to anything the first task may be to reject ‘technology‘ completely.
– Dylan
Related reading…
Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine – Thomas Dekeyser
Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence – Dan McQuillan
Digital Degrowth Technology in the Age of Survival – Michael Kwet
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