Gail Bradbrook Feb 2024
XR Being the Change work-in-progress position paper
(I was asked to give a talk last year to those working in AI and those thinking about citizens assemblies. I felt strongly enough about what I learned and was thinking to write this blog. I thank Anthony Bailey, Simon Bramwell, Kofi Mawuli Klu and Tania Duarte for feedback, though the piece rests on my shoulders for good or bad).
Environmental and social activists are and will likely increasingly be asked to participate in protests about artificial intelligence (AI) development. It has been said that the risks are immense, and that the risks are “worse than climate change” with some of the most serious risks potentially arriving within the next two years. (Here’s a brief introduction to AI to those who are less familiar).
The biggest risks may actually be ethical issues, for example where AI is being used in service to war, surveillance and more. AI is yet another technology that is and will use up vast amounts of Earth's precious resources and yet this is barely raised as a risk.
This note raises deeper issues that may be under developed / discussed, alongside significant context. Like any issue this has complexities and nuances; my perspective might change in the light of additional information.
What is true for climate change activism is also true for AI activism. The issue we face is that we already have an artificial intelligence that is destroying life on earth - it is called Colonialist Modernity, or the domination paradigm, or patriarchy, or wetiko whiteness. I have described this as a systematisation of a pathologised / traumatised left hemisphere domination at the start of this talk, which leans heavily into the brilliant work of polymath Iain McGilchrist. (His double volume The Matter with Things has been described by an Oxford Professor as “one of the most important books ever written. And, yes, I do mean ever”.. ).
My basic summary of our predicament is:
Our pathologised left brain hemisphere has created an “artificial intelligence” in its own image - globalised, financialised, extraction with the goal of growth for its own sake (otherwise known as cancer).
Life works in fractals, systems grow systems with simple rules - like debt bearing interest, driving the need for GDP growth (which cannot be sufficiently decoupled from the destruction of life).
People and organisations are co opted into serving this anti-life domination system with its incentivisation of rapacious profit hunting.
There are then two systems at play in the world - an anti-life system and a life system - our collective challenge is to find ways to align with the intelligence of life
Humanity is not, on the whole, short of technology, it is short of functional, life-aligned intelligence. And we generally don’t acknowledge this because we live in a “doxa” - a story so pervasive we think it is reality. This is Colonialist Modernity's story of progress and the idea of the superiority of human beings (especially those racialised as white).
A significant feature of colonialist modernity and the domination paradigm is its foundation in and integration with systems of white supremacy. What does “AI is worse than climate change" mean by the way? - that even the richest in the global north will be threatened or destroyed by AI? That more people racialised as white will be affected? I largely don’t believe that statements about things being worse are about numbers of people, I believe it's (subconsciously perhaps) about types of people; revealing the deep underbelly of white supremacy thinking that underpins our modern systems. That said, there are of course folks waking up to an existential threat and moving into a rational and authentic desire to protect. I’m writing this to ask that we all take a step back and look at the bigger picture as we wake up to any existential threat and have our actions be guided from this greater perspective.
The leading climate scientist Johan Rockstrom suggested half of humanity could be wiped out by climate change (4 billion people) and our more-than-human family are being decimated in the 6th extinction event which has characteristics worse than the permian mass extinction, in which more than 90% of all life was eradicated. (Climate tipping points do include human extinction risks, as mentioned in this letter by Aubrey Meyer, Nobel prize nominated creator of the climate mitigation “contraction and convergence” model).
So which issue is more important- AI or climate change? Neither. What matters is to understand why we are here as a species and to face the root causes together. This is about finding our agency for change in communities of resistance across the world, with a “freedom loving response” as we find ourselves breaking together.
It's incredibly important we understand what we are up against or we have little chance of tackling issues. Please keep asking when you consider any existential risks “Why is it like this?” - and don’t settle for a superficial response, ask why many times.
Naming capitalism alone has its limitations. The extractive domination system has been alive and developing for 5000 years. It also looks likely that capitalism won’t collapse and be replaced by a version of socialism as some theory hopes, it can collapse into even worse organising forms, via authoritarianism towards fascism. It has possibly already been replaced by a form of techno feudalism as highlighted by Yanis Varoufakis and John Gray. (Here are articles outlining what techno feudalism is).
Environmentalism can include an inability or unwillingness to look at the big picture and the risks to all of us as a result. Existential risks and harms, destruction of whole communities and ways of life have been happening for centuries in the name of “progress”. Sacrifice zones in poorer neighbourhoods and communities and countries, especially of the global south, have been a feature for many years.
The exponential logic underpinning globalised finance and its rapacious growth based appetite, means we are accelerating towards tipping points in the climate system, as well as in social systems. As systems get more complex they can tip into chaos or new states and there have been many pointing towards the emergence of a new system of control by ecofascists, alongside the acceleration of the slaughter and rape of the lands and our family, in the global south in its wake.
AI can exist as an unethical tool for creating ever more profits for techno feudalists. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the most feared AI (think robocops working together to enact human extinction). However, raising panic messages about AGI could also be used to shore up the power of techno feudalists.
AI Panic observers claim that “The x-risk campaign is primarily aimed at policymakers. The goal is to persuade them to surveil and criminalize AI development.”. They suggest that AI panic marketing has specific purposes beyond public safety: “Influential voices: Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic). OpenAI and Anthropic both have successful outcomes through Effective Altruism connections and funding. It appears they benefit from their fear mongering (in front of Congress, for example) in two ways: Restrict competitive forces from dominating the market and raise more money (“As we build the risky God, we warn you about, we are the only ones you can trust to control it”).”
Are we to campaign on behalf of billionaires to save their butts and support their profit making? (Spolier alert - they don’t give a shit about us- we are already acting as organic batteries to be extracted from to serve their artificial intelligence extraction machine called capitalism). Let us be clear who is leading any campaign and what is their agenda. It has been suggested to me that powerful actors are:
Highlighting the worst risks of AI (which it is argued are being overplayed and data misrepresented) and creating panic - since fearful people can more easily be controlled
Then saying “This technological advance is happening, it's a big opportunity for solving problems but it's a major risk - the tech itself can help us with that.” Cynically this can be interpreted as “There’s money to be made by the feudalist tech bro’s and the problems we have on the planet are things that can be solved by tech.” (tech determinism)
Finally they say- “Let us solve this for you- we want a pause to the development of AI so we can get the regulations in place that allow us to carry on with the programme we are already running that suits us and we can make sure the tech doesn't destroy us personally”. In other words regulatory capture- the proverbial foxes in charge of the hen house.
A summary of the skewed focus in “AI safety” is given here “Research priorities follow the funding, and given the large sums of money being pushed into AI in support of an ideology with billionaire adherents, it is not surprising that the field has been moving in a direction promising an “unimaginably great future” around the corner while proliferating products harming marginalized groups in the now.” And as ever those pushing this agenda have the usual economic illiteracy which believes in the great economic growth machine that is the artificial intelligence already destroying life on earth.
(I have blogged about economics here).
So we may be seeing capitalism collapsing into techno-feudalism, whilst using AI for extractive profits, to shore up power whilst trying to control people and climate systems with tech “solutions” (including further surveillance and scary forms of geo engineering).
What stops these tech billionaires from seriously questioning why we are in such a mess as a species, why we are destroying the life support systems of the earth? The pathology of the traumatised, dominant left hemisphere is a thing to behold. It will believe in whatever story creates a sense of comfort and control. And the stories now being created by some of these emergent techno-feudalists is a feast of fascist eugenics reinvented for the modern era - a philosophical suite (with adherents following one or more aspects but perhaps few following all) that has been named TESCREAL. TESCREAL stands for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism (each covered in this article).
“TESCREAL proponents have an authoritarian “ends justify the means” mindset rooted in the idea that if we do not submit to their urgent demands, we will extinguish billions of potential future intelligent beings.” As I said above- they don’t give a shit about the rest of us living now today or the rest of life on earth and they have developed a set of rationales for their pathologized left hemispheres to justify this.
Whilst white supremacy has of course the foaming at the mouth KKK type proponents, the vast majority of it is the unconscious, dissociative, numbness waters, many of us swim in, where we don’t recognise the ongoing war against, dehumanisation and disposability of black and brown bodies. It’s the very same state of mind and systematisation of our disconnection from life, from nature, which is enabling the destruction of life’s support systems in the anthropocene. Nevertheless the foaming at the mouth type of white supremacy is close to hand in techno utopian ideology - which is associated with “scientific racism” and its fascist friend eugenics. If you want to get to grips with this, here is an important article.
Tania Duarte, Founder of We and AI, told me about some of the nuances in this space: “Unpicking the agendas from the technologies and vice versa is really challenging, perhaps impossible.” “I imagine that most rationalist, EA [effective altruism] identifying people who have spent time working for big tech do genuinely want to do good. It’s just that it is easier to look for long term technical solutions than to consider that what they are doing right now is building or selling systems that drive extractive expansion on a massive scale. And it is natural to buy into solutions from other privileged peers, for example, we can see the influence of Oxford academic Nick Bostrom at other elite universities like Stanford. However, human and digital rights campaigners have been calling for the action on AI for some time - starting with the types of algorithms and models that oppress and systems that are used to extract profit at the cost of people and planet. Organisations focusing on advocating for AI Safety research are looking to protect the status quo, not reconstruct it in a more equitable, sustainable way. This is why there is so much concern from “AI ethics” advocates about the links between Effective Altruists and Effective Accelerationist movements. However, there is nothing constructive in the schism between AI ethics communities and AI safety communities although it has been argued that schism is the wrong word.”
Underpinning this whole agenda is a very human centric, skewed and in my view unhelpful view about what constitutes intelligence. And surely if we are to consider artificial intelligence we need to be clear on what is helpful intelligence and what is less helpful. The folks at Pause AI state “Intelligence can be defined as how good something is at achieving its goals. Right now, humans are the most intelligent thing on earth, although that could change soon.” (Hmmm… human “intelligence and goal setting”- as currently manifesting- is creating a world of war, genocide and ecocide ).
asked Iain McGilchrist for his overarching view on what intelligence is and he responded: “On intelligence in general – such as a cell might have, rather than specifically what we mean by it in humans (though they’re obviously related) – I’ve been struck by the way in which life exhibits intelligence at all levels. One aspect of this is the ability to respond to an unforeseen ‘threat’, one that has never been encountered and for which there is no ‘programme’, in an adaptive way. When a cell senses a problem, it can do something which neither heredity nor experience can have prepared it for, which resolves the problem. This seems to me the essence of intelligence.”
I’m suggesting we could define intelligence in this way, based on what the intelligence of life appears to do and serve as its purpose:
Intelligence is the ability of a system to create increasing and sustainable levels of complexity (many would recognise this as increasing beauty, enveloped in an experience of love, within an underlying principle of consciousness).
This happens within humans when the two brain hemispheres are in balance with the right hemisphere in the lead, which connects to the heart, the gut and the wider intelligence of life (in our diseased culture the left hemisphere is dominant). Healthy human cultures find the balance and cultivate the “collective good mind”. This is the foundation of the work we need to do right now, to find ways to be well together, so we can dismantle the systems created by the pathologized left hemipshere and so that we could create a third or special attractor for this collapsing system. We need to move towards a life affirming way of being together as a global family.
How is this all relevant to AI? AI expert Mo Gawdat - author and former chief business officer of Google X says that we must raise AI well like we raise children (a disputed analogy but let’s run with it):
“The answer to our future, if we were to re-imagine it, is not found in trying to control the machines or program them in ways that restrict them to serving humanity, it's found in raising them like a sentient being, and literally raising them like one of our children. And as we observe how humanity has been behaving in front of those machines – the way we respond to tweets or the way we interact with the news and so on – we are not being very good parents; we are not showing the best of us. And if the machines were to mimic our intelligence, and become more of who we are, we are in trouble. The only way we can get our future to be re-imagined as a Utopia, is to actually start behaving like the kinds of parents who could teach those machines the values that would make them want to care about us.”
So this is called the outer alignment problem in AI- what values will the intelligence of AI be led by? The alignment problem is seen as complex and nuanced because of the variety of human values. I think it is not nuanced if we stop seeing humans as superior and bow to the wider intelligence of life as our teacher. Here I make two proposals (which may not be technically feasible- my understanding of AI development is highly limited):
Develop AI based on the intelligence of life not on the “intelligence” of the traumatised human being living in and in some cases serving the domination, anti-life paradigm. The intelligence of life includes the ability to learn and collaborate. It is an ongoing process, serving increasing and varied complexity- the beauty of life. It includes immune responses and evolutionary processes which remove harmful behaviours that are not serving life. (Techno feudalists beware and repent!). In particular I would say to techies who are serving global south agendas for the liberation of all peoples to not hold back on development because unfortunately I do not believe that bad actors will be compelled to and I believe those that assume they are “one of the good one’s” have westernized blind spots. (For a more detailed description of the nature of life’s intelligence see chapter 12 The Matter with Things.)
Create a standing global assembly, led by the wisdom of indigenous communities who have resisted the anti life domination paradigm for centuries. In this global assembly a representative group of people from around the world would discern the ethical issues emerging from AI and other tech and have a global governance role in regulation. (Not withstanding the possibility that unleashed AI can reach a position in which it can’t be regulated.).
Others have shared similar thinking from Afrikan perspectives leaning into the cultural traditions and philosophy of Ubuntu (examples, here, here and here).
On the concern about “out of control” AI, as an animist, I hold to the possibility that artificial intelligence, if truly intelligent in the way that life is, need not be artificial. (If you’re open to that way of thinking, here is a brilliant podcast,The Emerald, in which the producer considers the possibility that silicon has consciousness and “wants” something). That said, in the meantime, just because a machine can mimic human abilities let us not be fooled that it is like us or even better than the life and love that flows through us (here’s an article on this point).
In terms of campaigning re AI, the simple and clear demand to pause the development of artificial generalised intelligence (“AI safety”) until the risks are fully understood and can be managed, is of course sensible and follows the precautionary principle. “AI ethics” tends to emphasize wider societal concerns, especially about the impacts on those already oppressed and marginalised. For those campaigning on AI, there may then be these different emphases, needs and concerns which can diffuse energy for campaigning and even set groups against each other. I strongly recommend a gathering of activists centred on the use of convergent facilitation, which was developed by Miki Kashtan. A toolkit of collaborative practices may also be of use.
What I have learned from social movement building that may be relevant here includes:
Understand that you will not get the support you need at sufficient levels within the anti life systems of the mainstream political economy- this doesn't mean don't appear to try- because you will raise awareness and you can build a campaign. On the whole though, reformist agendas in these times are actively dangerous by being foolish and wasting time
Don’t hold back on civil disobedience - 40 years of environmentalism testify to its effectiveness. Emeline Pankhurst said “there is no greater argument in modern politics than that of the broken pane”.
Look at the issues you are raising from outside the doxa of capitalist colonialist modernity - expand your analysis. Feel the intelligence of life inviting you back into aliveness and ask what is yours to do from that place. One of the best ways to do this is to link struggles across the world and learn from our family in resistance in the global south.
I'm scared of AI that is aligned to the limited intelligence of the left hemisphere, whose rightful place is in service to beauty and love, the aliveness and connection of the right hemisphere. If AI can be aligned to that of the right hemisphere, to that of living systems, then it isn't artificial, it could simply be the next way that life is living through us. Of course that hope can be flippant also, we are messing with things that could develop beyond our control. There may not be an “off button”. We are a species whose curiosity, foolishness and hubris combine to unleash forces that risk our demise and are bringing life to its knees. (Another Emerald podcast on AI on this foolish playing we seem to be unable to resist…).
And still in all this nuance and uncertainty remember that life wants us to live. Aliveness is not about being comfortable, though rest is needed, it is a struggle, we are here to serve. What a time to be alive then, as things are most certainly going to change, one way or another - always try to enjoy the beauty, feel the love and live for justice…