This Machine Kills

We get back into the Q&A, picking up where we left off by talking about the profession of academia and working in institutions that are working against you, then get into advice for organizing in tech startups, how to counter the anti-luddite propaganda and deny the doomposting tendency, what our alternative podcasts would be about, and finally our bucket list for TMK guests. The Traditional Catholic Iceberg: https://twitter.com/PapistB/status/1741989796090974217 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Hosts answer listener questions on video game industry, writing process, and breaking into critical tech journalism. They discuss their love for video games and tabletop gaming, addressing issues like micro-transactions and profit-driven game design. They reflect on the negative impact of game design that prioritizes profits over player enjoyment. They also explore the speaker's preference for writing on paper and their disillusionment with news consumption.

The podcast discusses the universal power of value in capitalism and how it becomes an abstract source of domination. They explore value theory, laborer-capitalist relationship, and the production of surplus value.

Salomé Viljoen, a data analyst and researcher, discusses the relationship between social data and value creation. They explore the conversion problem of turning data into money and the need to consider social data's 'prediction value.' They also highlight the inadequacy of current data governance and the necessity for change in the political economy of social data.

With Cop City as a case study, we draw together two recent articles — one on the historical connection between right-wing racism, environmental groups, and ecoterrorist actions, and one on how the massive expansion of RICO laws to target (and fabricate) conspiracies of all kinds has become a key tool of prosecutorial power — to explore how the actions of right-wing groups precipitate the creation of stronger, tougher laws which then get used to further suppress left-wing movements. ••• The War on Ecoterror https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-war-on-ecoterror/ ••• An Offer You Can’t Refuse https://www.thedriftmag.com/an-offer-you-cant-refuse/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Israeli intelligence officer, referred to as a 'mass assassination factory,' discusses Israel's military strategy of wiping out targets and family homes using an AI system. They shine a light on the devastating consequences in Gaza, AI's potential to sanitize crimes, and the AI ethics community's lack of response. The high death toll and impact on families caused by targeted bombings, Israel's use of advanced technology, and the shocking exportation of apartheid and genocide technologies are also explored.

We dive into a new report that details Israel’s military strategy of wiping out “power targets” and “family homes,” which is bolstered and justified by an artificial intelligence system (Habsora, or “the Gospel”) that one Israeli intelligence officer called a “mass assassination factory.” The reporting is so shocking and unreal — and the critical silence about the system, by many people whose whole beat is “AI ethics,” is noticeable. This is what the lethal risk of AI looks like in its real material actuality, not as some imaginary potential possibility. ••• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ ••• Obama's secret kill list – the disposition matrix https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/obama-secret-kill-list-disposition-matrix ••• On the Moral Collapse of AI Ethics https://upfromthecracks.medium.com/on-the-moral-collapse-of-ai-ethics-791cbc7df872 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

The podcast delves into the intriguing history and influence of religious ideologies on AI development, highlighting evangelical notions of transcendence. It explores the resurgence of AI in the 90s and its intertwining with Christian dominionism. The evolution of AI research and development is discussed, including algorithmic niche fields and the integration of GPU-based computation. The integration of technology in daily life, right-wing movements' fascination with technology, and the desire to use technology for dominance are also explored.

We discuss Chapter 6 — Capitalism and Difference — and get deeper into the relations between the social logic of capital and social structures of difference like gender, examining how they manifest in the “necessary outside” of social reproduction and the feminization of that labor. Mau gets us to think at different levels of abstraction about the nature, causes, and effects of these relations that are so integral to capitalism as it exists, but do not stem from capital. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

With the dust settling, we can take a broader view of the whole OpenAI debacle, what likely caused an internal culture war to boil over into a corporate coup, how OpenAI’s convoluted governance structure made a lot of people ignore the obvious power at play, and what this all means in a bigger sense for the ongoing development of AI. ••• OpenAI and the rift at the heart of Silicon Valley https://www.ft.com/content/a6505db4-c8d4-44c1-a030-502b364ed370 ••• OpenAI’s board had safety concerns. Big Tech obliterated them in 48 hours https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-11-20/column-openais-board-had-safety-concerns-big-tech-obliterated-them-in-48-hours Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)