It’s time! Would be the short headline for this photo taken on my way to work this morning.
The longer story is inspired by: ‘Why Trump is all-in on AI despite the warnings.’ The headline came amidst several prominent AI developers warning of the AI risks, and almost immediately it struck me that I already know the answer. It lies in Jason Hickel’s conclusion from ‘Less is more’:
Capitalism is intrinsically colonial in character.
Another layer of the answer to this BBC headline is: digital enclosure.
Capitalism is glued to the imperative of infinite growth through extraction and accumulation. As such, it constantly needs new territories to expand. It needs new colonies where enclosure results in less resistance, thus higher profit margins.
The internet is where digital colonialism is set to conquer new territories and expand frontiers for enclosures from which to extract unprecedented value. AI is its imperial army.
From the perspective of AI emerging into nearly all aspects of means of production and being controlled by very few, the prospect of capitalism (call it conscious, ethical, human or whatever you like), not seeing in AI an amazing opportunity for growth, extraction and accumulation, is dire.
Allow Trump and Co. to get rich(er) by maximising individual profit beyond their wildest imagination, and they will do whatever it takes to seize it. There is no doubt about it.
The tech giants are using enclosure practice to seize ever greater chunks of the internet under their control. They are grabbing the net in the same way colonial powers were grabbing land. Hence, the colonisation of the digital sphere is the new frontier for capitalism to pursue infinite growth.
The history of capitalism is a history of violence in which those who controlled the means of production could get away with paying the lowest wages to desperate workers who had no alternative but to accept. (Death through starvation not considered an alternative). Enclosure practice empowered them further by pushing more and more people of their land and turning them into wage workers.
The next step in digital enclosure will be controlling access by issuing leases for accessing temporary work. With more and more work being allocated to AI, the work that will be available will be scarcer and the competition increasingly more relentless. Controlling armies of unemployed that are hoping in desperation to be granted access to any kind of work, no matter the conditions, provides a powerful position to anyone controlling the gates.
Controlling the gates means controlling the votes. Controlling the votes is controlling democracy, or whatever is left of it.
AI will soon be powerful enough to take over control of the internet. Trump & Co. are hoping to be the only ones to control AI.
Unless we fight back, we will be pushed into fighting each other. The process is already unfolding through far-right rhetoric of antagonizing migrants and nationals. The next step is simply deepening antagonism into other groups. (options are nearly endless)
But if instead of competing we choose collaboration, we still have the chance to stop further enclosure and use the internet as a tool for ending poverty, improving human well-being and preventing the possibility of cascading ecological extinctions.
If we are to succeed, we have to lift our gaze from the screens and see each other.
It’s time!
Boris Matijas 