Event thoughts - Resisting Big Tech Empires
This took place on Saturday at Southbank Uni here in London. Organised by Global Justice Now it brought together activists and academics with a varied range of positions but unified by a disdain for the tech-oligarchy of the moment. It wasn't exclusively AI focused but, unsurprisingly, AI took up a lot of the attention.
I focused my day on attending the more practical, resistance themed workshops because of course I did but there were more talk/discussion based sessions too, which were apparently lively, to say the least.
It's an odd one to sit in a workshop where people are talking about the sort of thing I study for a (kind of) living with my PhD. It's a little bit voyeuristic at times even, hearing enthusiasm for organising and resisting, although only in the best way (I hope). I participate, of course, my research, neutral as it's sometimes obliged to be, is still a reflection of what I believe and find value in. But there's also that background sense of smiling affirmation too - 'look, I told you all people didn't want AI'.
There's also the necessary balance of academic infused community spaces. I may want to go off about all the interesting things I think I might know but, at the same time, there's a practical purpose at work in these events and while having a bit of knowledge to offer is great our role as (semi) academics should always be as auxiliary support I think, unless scheduled to speak directly.
Anyway, the workshops I attended - one on resisting data centres and the other on shifting away from the big tech platforms - were both very well attended and interesting. For the former the focuses were on legal and political challenges, as well as community ones. I'm wary of the first two, not against them at all, but I think we can already see legal routes of opposition being curtailed by the designation of data stuff as essential infrastructure, which means planning can be deferred to central government, a central government which hasn't just drunk the Kool Aid, it's actively drowning in a swimming pool of it. That said I've a small, cosy place in my heart for those legal types who commit themselves to offering righteous challenges with and for communities effected.
For the political my thoughts kind of follow on from the above. There are definite pressure points to be found, especially at local levels where individuals may genuinely be effected by or concerned about local concerns. As far as national planning around data centres goes though, see above. Our government not long ago tried to give away the collective creative output of an entire nation to US tech companies, now they're trying to siphon of vast amounts of water and energy to them in order to make us a floating data centre for the likes of Altman and Bezos. These are not reasonable allies to seek in any push back and nor have they shown themselves particularly susceptible to public opinion, unless that opinion is 'go after immigrants' of course. 'Political' doesn't necessarily mean engaging with the core though. There are plenty of forms of political activism and organising which can be more adversarial without the fading hope of shifting the perceptions of those most swayed by Silicon Valley lobbying.
Anyway, as for the third strand mentioned - community resistance - that's an obvious favourite of mine. The question of broad churches and alliances came up a few times throughout the day and I can go along with that, within certain boundaries. Continuing with the data centre theme - a lot of them are emerging on the green belt around London, just as a lot of them will be proposed on former industrial and rural sites. Depending on your own personal politics there will almost certainly be opinions around those emergent local oppositions to them that you won't like. Just as there is with the broader resistance to AI. Having tolerance for each other around individual campaigns will always be an important aspect of things. That doesn't mean not having your red lines, if Neo-Nazis suddenly decide they don't like Grok (which is highly unlikely, for very obvious reasons) then that still doesn't make them worthwhile collaborators, certainly not given the harms they're liable to inflict on any nascent resistance movement. But there's a whole world of grey around us and I do think there's a necessity operate in that, even if as a born and raised Londoner I do assume that anyone hovering around the edges of the M25 is probably some form of wrong'un.
Another suggestion raised, albeit in a very, very brief comment at a work shop from someone in a Pause AI shirt (sigh) was that we shouldn't make these struggles political. This is stupid. This is very stupid. These struggles are political, inherently so. There's no avoiding that, no way to engage with them without understanding that in fact. Now in the context of precarious alliances there are definitely ways of framing those issues and allowing for varying motivations but to be honest I'm not sure how you could approach them without some critical political perspective, even if you just let it form the background to individual actions. Having some sense of what obliquely funded arch-Doomers think is the alternative too I'm deeply unconvinced that their way is more help than hindrance.
The big tech change workshop was a lot more immediate as the guys from Rebel Tech Alliance gave a live walk through on privacy protection methods for your phone (changing settings, switching browsers, anti-surveillance apps etc). I know there's always a slight criticism of this stuff on the grounds of it, potentially, just being consumer choice and certainly the systemic effects can be questionable but that said there's absolutely nothing negative about doing it. For one thing it does, in some microscopic way, reduce the supply of data that's potentially available for these platforms, data on which their existence largely relies. For another it's a great manifestation of what Scott called Anarchist Callisthenics, or what I call Craft Resistance in my research. The effect of it isn't non-existent but, more importantly, it's a routine act of reminder that we have choices. Not consumer choices, but agential ones, we can reject those systems which seem inevitably imposed. Sure doing so by dropping Chrome to use Vivaldi won't break those systems (nor, frankly, have much consumer effect) but in being aware of and engaged with our own desire to negate or oppose what we consider unhealthy we certainly gain something, some resource of resistance which can grow and manifest in more overt and active forms elsewhere.
Another takeaway was just how much enthusiasm there is (accepting that this was obviously a very biased audience) for means to express resistance. I've mentioned Paris Marx's guide to getting away from US tech before, also mentioning some of the choices I made myself but I don't think we can ever have too much of this stuff out there. A desire to break away from the structures of big tech can and should be so ubiquitous that it overflows the small acts and starts looking for bigger ones. It's also worth noting that, when you're on the inside, a lot of this stuff can seem very obvious. If you already call yourself a Luddite then chances are a lot of the changes from this workshop wouldn't be anything new for you but for a lot of people it's entirely new and sometimes intimidating territory. So, if you have the skills to help people make the changes then have at it, don't assume knowledge until you know it's there.
And for a couple of final thoughts...
I caught Cory Doctorow's talk at the end of the day and it's probably no surprise to say that the man can speak. As with his book Enshittification he does a great job of pointing out some of the most rank offences of the big platforms and he definitely knows how to carry an audience with him. His solutions however are... meh. Half policy pressure, half consumer choice, no serious structural change (anti-capitalist or anti-tech). I still think he's a positive figure to have out there, you can definitely see his impact in how a lot of people are thinking and while his end points are a bit neutered getting people half way there is still a valuable contribution. So, if you get the chance I'd highly recommend catching him speak, was enjoyable if nothing else.
Speaking alongside him was Sofia Scasserra, an Argentine trade unionist. Also worth hearing but again I wasn't entirely uncritical. Unions are great, everyone should be in one, but her focus was on them and institutional power. As she mentioned herself though unions, especially the more tame ones, will always have an interested in maintaining the power and profitability of private companies to some degree. With AI that's always going to mark a stark limitation for their powers to resist it as a broad socio-technical mobilisation. You'd hope there would be some at least who'd take a firm line of straight refusal, seeing how AI can only ever be detrimental to the interests of labour, but a lot of the time compromise is going to come before principle on that. How you react to that obviously varies, some unions are better than others, but I'd say any faith in them should certainly be tempered with a bit of cynicism unless you can partner their institutional power with secondary, internal organising that forces them to stand against rather than pander to the money. Although I'm sure that's no news to anyone who's spent any time in a union.
I'll leave it there for now, although there's always more to mention (it was a good event, even with my critiques) like Dan McQuillan's usual, beautiful obstinacy in being abolitionist, or my ongoing thoughts about protest groups like Pull the Plug and Pause AI but having rambled long enough I'll leave that all til another day.
- Dylan