Dan MacQuillan on decomputing

In this episode I talk to Dan MacQuillan, Lecturer in Creative Computing at Goldsmiths, and author of Resisting AI: an Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. I read this in 2022, as soon as it was published, and it remains for me one of the most vivid, provocative and relevant critiques of ‘artificial intelligence’ as a project. Here, Dan speaks about the continuities between today’s machine learning models and earlier projects of categorising and disciplining people. We discuss how education is implicated in these architectures and how educators might resist. Dan has been a star of podcasts with tens of thousands of listeners, so I am deeply grateful that he made time to talk to me on this first episode of Imperfect Offerings in sound. Links Dan’s home page: https://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/people/d-mcquillan/ Resisting AI: and Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence from Bristol University Press: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai Dan’s ‘other’ podcasts on Resisting AI: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2023/07/17/the-extensive-and-unconventional-reach-of-dan-mcquillans-resisting-ai/ On Arendt’s diagnosis of ‘thoughtlessness’ as a feature and an enabler of fascism: https://danmcquillan.org/arendtandalgorithms.html On AI colonialism and the likely impacts on the Global South: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/17/ai-global-south-inequality/ or https://www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/ai-colonialism-supertopic/ On algorithmic states of exception: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/11079/ Wikipedia article on the Situationists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International And on Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation” Get full access to imperfect offerings at helenbeetham.substack.com/subscribe