Soylent Screens
The resource being maximized by digital technology is us
Now, AI overseers will squeeze every last dime from our bones unless we unite to stop them
A Producerist Manifesto
In the secular age, we have found our new God and it consists of ever-expanding binary code. We both worship and control this new deity, or so we imagine. Developments in AI will soon dispel that illusion. AI technology will create untold job losses, suffering, and upheaval for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of the world population. Not since the Manhattan Project have scientific inventors so thoroughly attempted to warn the public regarding the myriad disasters their own invention could bring about. Back in 2022, OpenAI’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever made news when he said large AI networks have already developed “partial consciousness.” He also warned that AI technology allows for the possibility of “infinitely stable” totalitarian governments. The next year, hundreds of scientists, tech industry executives, and public figures — including former AI researchers at Google, Microsoft, and ChatGPT — penned a public statement warning their creations could go rogue and target the …