Changing the dominant AI narrative

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on an exciting new project. I’m thrilled to say the website is now live. The AI Resist List is an international collaboration between many different people and organisations. These include We and AI, the Distributed AI Research Institute, the Refugee Law Lab and the independent journalist Karen Hao.

The AI Resist List aims to give hope to people who aren’t comfortable with the dominant narrative about AI that’s being pushed by the leading AI companies. This is the narrative we see and hear in the media. The narrative saying that AI is all-powerful, that it will be able to solve all our problems, that we need to get on board with it (now), that we can’t fight it. It’s the narrative that says AI is simultaneously going to save the world but maybe also destroy it.

We’re all familiar with this narrative. Because we see it every day in social media posts, in project descriptions, in headlines. We overhear people talking about AI, see it on billboards and get prompted to use it virtually every time we open an app. This current AI narrative is not inevitable, but we’re made to believe that it is. Many people I’ve spoken to say it’s hopeless to try to do anything about the way AI is being rolled out – we have to either embrace or ignore it. But the future of AI is not set in stone. The AI Resist List is about reclaiming our AI futures.

We have a choice

Because there is an alternative route. It’s possible to create a technological future which is responsible, equitable AND sustainable. AI must be by and for the people. It must be for everyone. This belief is core to all the organisations I’ve been working with, and in particular, We and AI. Last year, We and AI’s founder, Tania Duarte, led the research and publication of an important paper outlining what we call the “4Rs framework” – ways to resist, refuse, reclaim or reimagine AI. Through Tania I’ve met many amazing people. I’ve been given scope to set up my own ethnographic study into Palantir in the NHS (more on this next month), and also been able to join the IEEE working group on AI safety for children.

This week, I’ve been inspired to meet Karen Hao and also hear her speak publicly. Karen’s current UK book tour – promoting Empire of AI (paperback edition) – has included appearances on Channel 4 News and the Jeremy Vine Show. On Wednesday she was interviewed at Second Home Spitalfields by Franz Wild for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In addition to hear Karen talk about why she uses the metaphor of empire to describe AI, it was also great to hear Karen mention the Resist List, which she helped fund, and why it matters.

Here, from her talk, are 5 reasons why the AI Resist List is important:

1. Combating extractive practices

It’s no coincidence that AI companies come to Africa for the data workers and South America for the minerals and the water, says Karen. The people she interviewed for Empire of AI said that for centuries they’ve been engaged in the same fight, just different faces. AI companies that develop, maintain and expand large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI claim resources like labour, data and intellectual property without anything like adequate compensation, considering the huge value they’re extracting. 

2. Raising awareness

People just think these things (AI) are in the ether, says Karen. They’re not used to thinking of them as material things. More people need to be made aware of the real world impact of AI. The shuttering of Sora was because of grassroots action. Protests have stalled billions of dollars’ worth of data centres in the US. Many people are now getting rid of their OpenAI products. All this protest and backlash is sand in the gears of AI – and companies and investors are very aware of this vulnerability.

3. Combating the Messiah complex

The AI world is a little bit like Dune, says Karen. Dune‘s hero, Paul Atreides, steps into the myth of the Messiah to control the people and then he starts to believe he actually is the Messiah. The people who go into OpenAI get deeply absorbed into a kind of metaphysical vortex. If you’re in that environment where everyone’s very driven, passionate and mission-focused, you begin to absorb those beliefs.  

4. Questioning the money

Karen also talks about the distorting power of immense wealth. She mentions a telling diary entry from (OpenAI’s co-founder and president) Greg Brockman where he is trying to work out how OpenAI can reach a one billion dollar valuation for first time – the entry shows that it’s all about telling yourself the story you need to tell yourself while also coincidentally making yourself a billionaire. Everything in this would is a blur, a mix, a concoction of mission and personal reward.

5. Reversing the monoculture

Karen praises Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI which addresses the vast power dynamic that is happening right now. Companies like OpenAI are trying to capture the main poles of accountability: the media, government, educational and religious institutions. Of course the groups with most money and most personnel will be most represented. The (university-led) research space has been captured. And independent researchers are so burnt out. We need to engage in order to change this.

Take a look

So, if you have a moment, please scroll through the AI Resist List here. Read through the 31 examples currently there – and see if any inspire you. There are projects like Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi’s mental health programme for data workers in Kenya or YK Hong’s collection of online resources to help people find alternatives to big tech products. The Resist List includes new trade unions like the Coalition of Digital Employees in the Phillipines and the global Tech Workers Coalition, as well as organised challenges to data centre construction in New Mexico (US) and Uruguay. There’s also a separate list containing 8 different examples of “possible futures”. The aim is to build out all these examples and add to them, and create additional information, stories and case studies at another website run by We and AI: notinevitable.ai.

Hope you find this all of interest. I’ll keep you posted!