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AI : The Technocratic Usurption of Power? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-06

***Warning: you are entering a non-American point of view diary*** :-) A Morning Muse Production

My thoughts

I’ll be clear. The Technocrats are the billionaires whose Empires stretch worldwide with little [if any] oversight.

For the time being, their power is limited, granted, used, and ignored by various styles of government, depending upon whom the technocrats deem most willing/profitable/easily corruptible. Claims of “foreign interference falls” on deaf ears.

Regarding AI, the limitations of which are not fully defined, this depends upon how easy it is to develop. The more it is developed, the easier future development will become, and it will be available to both good and bad actors of any political/regime color.

I, for one, find it hard to rely on trust alone. This is especially true when diversity is sneered upon by those wanting an identikit Stepford world, a world so boring/dull it will get what it deserves.

Diversity is an essential ingredient to the human condition.

A group letter in Le Monde today.

'Artificial intelligence accelerates environmental disaster, deepens injustices and exacerbates the concentration of power' ~A Le Monde Op-Ed. [Paywall I’ll C&P the main points]

“More than 20 organizations in the Hiatus coalition, including La Quadrature du Net and the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, argue in an opinion piece in 'Le Monde' that the widespread deployment of artificial intelligence must be resisted in the name of human, social and environmental rights.”

Everywhere in public services, AI is being driven to proliferate at the cost of increased technological dependence. Everywhere in companies, managers are calling for AI to "optimize" work. Everywhere at home, in the name of convenience and a nonsensical race for productivity, we're being pushed to adopt it. Yet, without prejudging specific applications and the possibility that they might actually serve the general interest, how can we ignore the fact that these innovations have been made possible by a formidable accumulation of data, capital and resources under the aegis of tech multinationals and the military-industrial complex? That, to be successful, they require an increase in the power of graphics chips and data centers, with an intensification of raw materials extraction, and the use of water and energy resources?

How can we fail to see that, as an industrial paradigm, AI is already having disastrous consequences?

That, from agriculture to the arts and many other professional sectors, it amplifies the process of deskilling and dispossession with regard to the tools of the trade, while reinforcing managerial control?

In countless reports, AI is seen as the stepping stone to a new cycle of capitalist expansion, and it is proposed to flood the sector with public money to keep Europe in the race with the US and China.

Above all, they are dangerous insofar as, far from being the technology that will save us, as often suggested, AI on the contrary accelerates environmental disaster, deepens injustices and exacerbates the concentration of power.

These questions/observations need answering now, before the fait accompli.

A Morning Muse

~A

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/6/2301858/-AI-The-Technocratic-Usurption-of-Power?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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