The booing that almost drove Eric Schmidt off that commencement stage when he tried to push AI should be a reminder that there are pretty much no other issues, short of hatred of child abuse, that cut across political lines more dramatically than the growing anger and pushback against Big Tech AI systems being forced on us, their associated data centers, and the politicians who support them.
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This. Billionaires should not exist. At the very least, that would be a good start.
https://mastodon.social/@justcameheretosay/116585936313016977
@justcameheretosay I agree that there is no reason for billionaires to exist. They could be heavily asset taxed to a very high level and still live lives we could never dream of.
@lauren
Please post a link. I want to enjoy it too 👉👈🥺
@lauren Everyone over 10 knows that something like Skynet would be a threat to the 98%.
@lauren Probably worth noting that Schmidt is facing allegations of rape, domestic abuse, spying, and corporate retaliation by his ex-girlfriend (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-03-06/former-google-chiefs-spying-sex-assault-lawsuit-sent-to-arbitration), so his support for AI is probably the least of my concerns regarding the man.
And this isn’t the first or only allegations of him being a gross creep either.
@lauren Ha, best news yet today, hadn't seen that story. Hopefully these folks will start getting a clue.
@ai6yr
Probably not. Affluenza brakes your cognitive abilities, that you go full-Principal Skinner without the Aurora Borealis.
…and still I can't thing about something they would say or that would make their managing boards think that they shouldn't maybe stay in a position of power (except getting that clue).
@dzwiedziu @ai6yr The way to get a serious leash on AI is to make the AI firms fully responsible for misinformation and damage done by those systems, as humans would be who did the same thing. No 230 protection. AI likes saying "I" a lot, just like a person. They must be 100% responsible financially and criminally -- the latter meaning CEOs in prison when horrible events like suicides or murders are triggered by AI chatbots, etc.
@lauren
Replace "AI" with "corporations" and you'd fix a lot of flaws in capitalism. A few CEOs going to jail would do wonders to corporate governance ("pour encourager les autres"). Especially if "I didn't know" wasn't allowed as a defence (it's the CxOs' jobs to know and to insure that they know).
(This wouldn't fix all of capitalism, despite what libertarians might think; but having "skin in the game" usually improves outcomes)
@dzwiedziu @ai6yr
This. ^^^
A developer is responsible for the context of a "fix" pushed under their ID. Companies are held accountable for their employees' speech, or ads they produce. The system behind it doesn't matter.
Every chat bot deployed on a customer support website gets to issue binding discounts on behalf of its controlling company.
Liability and responsibility come along with whatever benefits business owners believe they are getting from using these systems.
In an interview with Chris Hayes, Derek Thompson points out that the vast wealth of the fossil fuel industry is being poured into AI to concentrate power into the hands of a very few billionaires.
Does anyone want to be a vassal to #PrinceBonesaw or his capo Musk ?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/business/xai-humain-saudi-musk-spacex.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/technology/saudi-arabia-elon-musk-xai.html
Or illiterate peasantry ruled by Koch's alliance of fossil fuel bigots?
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
https://jacobin.com/2018/06/public-education-privatization-koch-brothers-teachers
@lauren So many of my fellow faculty think students are cheating left and right but so many students keep telling us how much they loathe AI. Not all of them, but most of them. While there’s a lot to worry about from techbros, I think our students are largely on to the con.
@lauren@laurenweinstein.org The truly incredible part is that if ML progress had continued to be pushed forward at the pace of better medicines and energy efficiency breakthroughs, it would have been nothing but celebration.
And yet.
@slightlyoff It's worse than that. The understandable hatred of the horrific LLM systems being foisted on us is causing potentially beneficial AI applications to increasingly become collateral damage.
"Beneficial AI" is about as credible as atom bombs for peace.
@eestileib @slightlyoff That's incorrect. AI/machine learning systems can have major benefits in data analysis, particularly in medical and related "big data" fields. It's specifically LLM generative AI systems that are the source of the horrific slop, not "AI" in general.
@lauren ...and that's before discussing the layoffs and capital misallocation. Real "hat-trick of value destruction" stuff.
