Dr. Andy Farnell: Time to Pull the Plug?
A couple of hours ago Dr. Andy Farnell published an article in which he asks: "Time to pull the plug?"
He previously told us about today's march in London (nope, not about politics!).
His new article is insightful, as usual. Some excerpts:
Until recently there was little interest in digital rights. That changed suddenly. First, a two year global pandemic made people hostage to intrusive and isolating technology. Then the industrial oligarchs consolidated and re-branded their most abusive, exploitative machinery as "AI" and insisted we all "adapt" to it.Once upon a time people believed that technology brought opportunity, freedom, more choice, accessible accurate information. Once we believed digital technology brought us together.
Look around you now.
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In Britain, successive governments have sold our healthcare, policing, schools and civil service to giant US Big Tech. The problem, put bluntly, is that our digital technology is run by foreign fascists. The "AI" summit at Bletchley Park was sham to carve up Britain and sell it to the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta.
Bias, mistakes, censorship and sabotage is much more common than you might think. Our digital tech is hostile to people who think or live differently and it cannot accommodate diverse human values. Suppression and bias is "built-in", cleverly hidden and always done with "plausible deniability". This makes democracy impossible. It destroys trust and social relations. It magnifies power and inequality. We are heading towards technofascism.
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A generation is finally rebelling against being forced to accept a pale substitute for real life and impingement on their technical autonomy. Their privacy is shredded. Their dignity is trodden on. New groups like "pulltheplug.uk" and "smartphonefreechildhood.org" are popping up all over. These are not "Luddites".
Let's stop the ridiculous idea that old people have a problem with technology. Everyone has a problem with digital technology. It is the youngest and most vulnerable who now have something important to say about that. At least us oldies can remember a world before technofascism. We understand technology much better because we built it and we survived without it. What has been done, can be done - axiomatically!
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Increasingly, "fake security" is used to cheat you or distract you from your actual security. Purveyors of this have their own fake "experts" and spread disinformation. Real experts trying to counter deceptive narratives have to work overtime with constant gardening to pull up the weeds and try to spread a little truth.
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The proper term for "digital democracy", as we use it, is Software Freedom. It makes no odds if the State or a giant corporation control technology if it is abusive. Technology must be determined by the people and meet the standards of a liberal, open, pluralistic society. [...] Perhaps the real tragedy is that machine learning and data science have always held the potential for enormous good. As a researcher and theoretical founder in the domain of signal processing what I see "AI" as today is a scandal, a cheap insult and debasement of computer science. We're always on the look-out for positive stories, where ordinary people are using freedom-respecting open source tools that they control to do amazing things, holding power to account, sharing knowledge, thwarting obstacles to freedom and higher thinking.
People whom they call "Luddites" are not left behind. They leave behind what they grew to understand actively works against them and likely against society at large. █
Image source: pull the plug