What would an AI-free world look like? What would AI abolition entail: materially, socially, spiritually and politically? What is (are!) our horizon(s)?
We envision a world free of extraction and exploitation, where everyone has enough to live and thrive, within the radical abundance provided by our Earth. An Earth that is not mined for profit, but restored and respected, by all and for the benefit of all. A world where capital no longer has control over our lives. A post-growth, post-capitalist world. A world of repair and care economies. A world full of libraries: of books, of media, of tools, of anything and everything. A world of sufficiency, conviviality, solidarity and community.
We envision a world where democratic decision-making replaces algorithmic imposition. Where our lives are collectively decided, not managerially determined. A world of people’s assemblies, worker’s assemblies, assemblies galore. In this world, we meet more often, with our neighbors, with our comrades, with our friends and family members of the human and more-than-human kind. We have more conversations. Casual conversations. Political conversations. Difficult conversations. Conversations about what we want the world to look like. But we converse, often, with real embodied beings, who have desires and feelings, who can convey meaning and emotion. And these conversations are not mediated by screens, but by shared food and drink, by shared dreams and desires, by a shared will to co-live and make the world better, for us and for those who will come after us.
We envision a world that is just. A world where the lives of a wealthy few are not predicated on the suffering of the many. A world free of colonial domination. Free of Big Tech elites. Free of all elites. A world where LLMs, neural networks or any kind of large-scale algorithm cannot exist, because Land cannot be grabbed and occupied; because our water and energy cannot be hoarded; because people cannot be coerced into slavery to mine for metals, extract coal or moderate violent content, for pennies on the hour. A world of reparations. A world that can repair itself, while acknowledging how sick it once was.
We envision a world where we are conscious of what we do, and why we do it.In this world, we value process over product. We re-valorize craft, artisanship, low tech, careful making and unmaking. Learning for learning’s sake. Teaching for teaching’s sake. Doing for doing’s sake. We look at old ways of doing things, not with a dismissive eye, but with a critical one – aware of the mistakes of the past, but also in appreciation of the past’s wisdom.
We envision a world where we have more time. More time to do the things we like, for the simple reason that we like to do them. Not to pad our CVs, to gain more followers, to be more efficient, to impress our boss, or to get to the top. In this world, there is no top. No hamster wheel. No masters. No slaves. But there is time. There is time to be idle, unproductive, inefficient. To reflect on who we’ve become and who we can be. There is time to experience the world around us, to rediscover how wonderful the world is. There is time to simply be.
We envision a world in which intellectual and manual labor are not separated and ranked. A world that revalorizes the labor that makes life possible – cleaning, cooking, taking care of waste, taking care of others, and simply taking care. A world that disavows both algorithms that constrain our bodies and algorithms that constrain our minds, instead cherishing the free collective expression of our fully embodied selves.
We envision a world free of all algorithms of control. Not just free of high-tech surveillance but also free of borders, of police, of military imperialism. A world where no one has enough power to build a data center, a fighter jet, or a nuclear bomb.
We envision many such worlds. In all these worlds, our present is not trapped by the past, not constricted by the logic of the machine, not directed, managed or predicted. Instead, infinite futures are possible.
Our project for AI abolition is a constructive one. It means rebuilding society on top of the wreckage of history, while we still can, and rediscovering the utopias we thought lost among the debris. We need hands, and minds and hearts, and we need you.
There is no fate but what we make… together.