OpenAI chief Sam Altman recently declared that the world should accept some negative consequences for the sake of technological progress and human agency. According to Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit, this argument is incoherent because tech oligarchs actively deny everyday people the power to decide whether they want these systems imposed upon them. Mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle, people are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought. The tech overlords have proceeded on the assumption they can ignore or override the will of the people, like the Trump administration. A nine-year-old I spend time with recently remarked: “I don’t trust AI,” more or less out of the blue, and I think she speaks for a lot of us. The tech leaders onstage with Trump at his second inauguration thought they’d turn him into their golden escalator up; the current revolt suggests they could follow him on the golden escalator down.
A widespread nationwide revolt has emerged against datacenters, artificial intelligence, surveillance cameras, and the corporations and broligarchs driving them. Communities across the political spectrum are uniting to block datacenter construction, with tracking initiatives noting that at least 142 activist groups across 24 states have organized opposition efforts. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections.
Local concerns frequently focus on tangible impacts such as land degradation, water usage, rising electricity prices, and noise pollution, since datacenters provide minimal local employment. Underlying these grievances is a deep frustration with high-handed attempts to force communities into submission.
This grassroots backlash extends far beyond zoning disputes. In September, more than 1,000 nurses and community members marched in San Francisco to demand that healthcare institutions sever ties with Palantir, a surveillance firm connected to Peter Thiel that also collaborates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Protest organizers highlighted software errors, privacy violations, and the destructive impacts of immigration enforcement. Last week, Robert Reich highlighted the link between corruption and affordability. Violates patient confidentiality and the president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee said: “The violence and destruction unleashed by immigration agents and enabled by Palantir is a total violation of nursing values of care and compassion.”, nurses in the march noted that the software makes significant errors.
Resistance is also growing within the tech industry itself. Recent statements from former Anthropic safety employee Jacob Coxon regarding near-term existential risks underscored the amoral approach of industry leaders. Furthermore, documents filed for Anthropic’s initial public offering explicitly acknowledged that artificial intelligence models could introduce catastrophic or existential threats to humanity. OpenAI employee David Robinson also resigned recently, stating that Silicon Valley lacks the necessary wisdom to navigate the future. A Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future, welcome back to How We Win. And the sheer arrogance of choosing to make profit-driven private decisions about the collective future is another reason to loathe and oppose them, the documents for Anthropic’s IPO acknowledged AI models could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”.
New grassroots organizations continue to form in response to these developments. Mothers Against Media Addiction has launched campaigns targeting digital platforms, while the Association for Human Mathematics was established in September to protect mathematics as a human endeavor against artificial intelligence threats. This organization arose after OpenAI claimed to solve a longstanding mathematical problem, reinforcing the belief among creative workers that the cognitive struggle of learning and creating is vital to human identity. The one where a badass female protagonist leads the action-movie-style spectacular destruction of Skynet, the massive computer system that will otherwise go rogue and pit itself and a plethora of advanced weapons against the human race, i’ve been a fan of the film Terminator 2 forever. Although the guerrilla campaigns to take down, disable or destroy Flock cameras have some action-movie charms (wading through the bureaucratic process of getting cities to reject or take down the surveillance technology is probably more effective.), we’re not in a film and we’re probably not going to solve the problems big tech creates through spectacular violence. Something you care about, even love, it is beautiful because behind fierce opposition to a destructive force is something you’re trying to protect from destruction. At least to some extent, and the midterms will be, among other things, a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with predatory tech giants over the public they’re supposed to serve and, arguably, humanity itself, the will of the people is in the process of proving them wrong. Too, saying in a recent social media post: “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity” and calling on us to “safeguard our humanity” against tech’s incursions, never mind my nine-year-old; the pope is speaking up against it. As many creative workers do, that the process of thinking, struggling, creating, learning, writing is at least as important as the product, that in doing the work we form ourselves as we, the mission statement recognizes. And I’ll be rooting – and voting – for humanity against oligarchical technology, terminator 2’s subtitle is Judgment Day; judgment day in 2026 will be election day. The people pushing it on us are pursuing its more dangerous and corrosive uses, even as their products again and again prove harmful and unreliable, although there are useful and legitimate applications of this technology. But we are seeing enough of a grassroots opposition going after so many aspects of tech, that maybe history will remember it as the beginning of our war against the machines, we will not see anything as dramatic and decisive as the explosion of Skynet. And the most recent round of lawsuits against Meta for what Instagram and Facebook do to children, other encouraging developments include New York City’s decision to ban AI for students through eighth grade. Spurred on by their constituents, are stumbling toward regulation of the tech industry that protects human beings against machines and the owners of those machines, meanwhile congressional Democrats. Much to the dismay of mathematicians, since then it has gone after many more.
Prominent critics warn that relying on automated systems risks intellectual and emotional deskilling. As the nation approaches the midterm elections, citizens face a crucial opportunity to push back against the overreach of tech monopolies and defend human values against corporate oligarchy.
