Chat GPT and Machine Learning

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I think it's important to be materialist about these things, you know, across the board. I mean, politically materialist or rather sort of a political economy and follow the money and everything else. But also actually look at the technologies themselves as not being simply neutral or passive technical frameworks in which people invest their politics. We tend to talk about as if it kind of exists over there somehow and then it's being bought into society. That is a kind of dangerous fiction. These things can never be separated from the wider social matrix. And so I guess for me trying to read the significance of AI is trying to say, well, but we're starting from blank here.

Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss how AI systems encourage ranking populations and austerity policies, and why understanding their politics is essential to opposing them.

Dan McQuillan is a Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He’s also the author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. You can follow Dan on Twitter at @danmcquillan.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Dan wrote specifically about ChatGPT and how we should approach it on his website.
Dan mentions TWIML as a podcast that has conversations with industry players that’s informative for how these technologies work (though you’re not likely to get a critical perspective on them), and Achille Mbembe’s book Necropolitics.
OpenAI used Kenyan workers earning $2/hour to make ChatGPT less toxic.
The UK had to scrap a racist algorithm it was using for visa applications and many councils dropped the use of algorithms in their welfare and benefits systems.
Dan mentions a Human Rights Watch report on the EU’s flawed AI regulations and its impacts on the social safety net.
The Lucas Plan was developed by workers at Lucas Aerospace in the 1970s, but rejected by their bosses.