An anti-fascist approach to AI means decomputing

An anti-fascist approach to AI means decomputing
Dan Mcquillan, Goldsmiths, University of London
AI’s apparatus of computation and social relations produces a nested set of inevitable harms, from states of exception to environmental degradation. A common thread running through its mathematical operations, its contemporary applications and its accompanying ideologies is the reemergence of eugenics and authoritarian social logics. In this talk I will argue for an anti-fascist approach to AI that aims for alternative technopolitical outcomes. I will suggest a strategy of decomputing which combines degrowth and decolonialism in order to delegitimise AI’s extractivism and its use as a diversion from the structural failures of the status quo. In practice, this would consist of forms of action that reject hyperscale machinery hurtful to the commonality, and instead attempt to transform collective subjectivities and technical arrangements at the same time.
Bio: After a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics, Dan worked with people learning disabilities & mental health issues, created websites with asylum seekers, ran social tech camps in Kyrgyzstan and Sarajevo and worked for Amnesty International and the NHS. He is currently a Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London and he recently authored Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.