January Links and Thinks
The AI pushback, things technology does badly, and how AI is shaping politics
These are dystopian times, but one thing that gives me hope is that Americans actively hate AI and the dystopian future the tech moguls are designing for us. Only ten percent of the populace feels more excited than concerned when it comes to AI. Ten percent. And skepticism is growing rapidly as people experience the dystopian side effects firsthand. It’s gotten so bad that technocrats are complaining that we’re not liking AI enough, causing previous generations of tech innovators to observe that if you have to beg people to like your product it might be because your product sucks. Even with corporate mandates to use AI, 31 percent of all employees, and 41 percent of Gen Z employees, are refusing to use it or its outputs. Resistance may not be futile after all.
Before I jump to the links, a quick note. After two years, I’m having to rethink my relationship to this newsletter, which I love writing but which pays very little. You will start to see more content go behind a paywall, including some of this issue. I really hate doing it, as I obviously want more people to read what I write. I am so grateful to have all of you as readers and I know that few people can afford to pay for everything they read. All the same, I hope some of you will decide that this newsletter is worth a few bucks a month. For the rest, I can guarantee that at least one post a month will remain free.
The Big Picture: Tech Resistance and Why It Matters
* AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage by Cory Doctorow (The Guardian)
If you only read one piece from this issue, make it this one. Doctorow lays out a critique of how AI technology is being deployed and marketed that is not anti-technology, just anti-exploitation.
A quote:
Tech bosses want us to believe that there is only one way a technology can be used. Mark Zuckerberg wants you to think that it is technologically impossible to have a conversation with a friend without him listening in. Tim Cook wants you to think that it is impossible for you to have a reliable computing experience unless he gets a veto over which software you install and without him taking 30 cents out of every dollar you spend. Sundar Pichai wants you to think that it is impossible for you to find a webpage unless he gets to spy on you from asshole to appetite. . .“There is no alternative” is a cheap rhetorical sleight. It’s a demand dressed up as an observation. “There is no alternative” means: “Stop trying to think of an alternative.”
* The Great Un-Humaning by Jill Filipovic (Substack)
Both the technocrats and many ordinary people say they want a frictionless existence. But what if friction is what makes life wonderful?
A quote:
There is friction inherent in any deep connection with another person, whether that’s a romantic partner or a friend or a parent or a child or or or. You are separate beings; sometimes you want different things, including from each other. Sometimes you disappoint each other; sometimes you surprise and thrill each other. You shift, they shift; sometimes you change in reaction to each other, sometimes you evolve intertwined. This is how, as people, we become. It’s the hardest work but the best work.
* This life gives you nothing by Jonah Weiner (Blackbird Spyplane)
A gorgeous, insightful, and funny essay about the way technology has warped our brains, devouring our ability to experience things for their own sake.
A quote:
A disconcerting question strikes me alarmingly often these days. I’ll be out in the world, and I’ll see something … let’s call it picturesque. Say I’m walking along a nature trail as a white wall of fog avalanches over a ridge, down a canyon of pine and oak, toward the blue waters of the Bay. I will find myself thinking, “My god, that is beautiful.” And then — even if I manage to keep my phone in my pocket, resisting what’s become a powerful instinct to reach for it — I will feel a strange tremor of uncertainty: “Am I looking at a screen right now?” I wonder.
