Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent
Neither artificial nor intelligent, AI are big powerful computers and ginormous data centres, using up electricity that the people need, wasting water that the planet needs, and made of silicon, copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, and other stuff, mined by people who remained poor, exhausted, exploited.
The AI data are spoils of theft – the pictures you shared, stolen; the text on websites, stolen; the writing by millions of authors, stolen; the brilliance of millions of creatives, stolen; Emotions, memories, associations, labour, histories, Stolen! By the Empire of AI.
The AI algorithms are powered
by millions of data workers –
Sorting, labelling, selecting, guessing, checking,
to lift out the words that might hurt or hate,
to sift out the pictures that are unsafe,
for low pay, long hours, and no job security,
traumatised by what they must bear and see.
Hear it from Wilington Shitawa! Don't hear it from me.
The AI technologies make predictions, based on patterns in the data – What is the next word in its output? What should be the colour for that pixel? What will you buy next, see next, like next? Do you want prediction to be your information?
Families denied welfare in the Netherlands. Black people denied healthcare in the USA. Poor neighbourhoods turned into crime hotspots, Asylum denied because the lawyer used chatbot, Palestinian man arrested. “Good Morning” translated as “Kill them.” AI Snake Oil for the people, AI profit for the bosses. Injustice structured by algorithms, coded by engineers, sold by billionaires, administered by the State.
They sell it as intelligent. And we are all so excited. Oh! It can do this! Oh! It can do that! We did not pay the writers, the designers, the artists, the singers, but we will pay for AI slop?
The AI Con Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Machine! Machine that can think like a human!! Only better!!! The minions of the empire have long tried to decide who to declare intelligent and who to deride.
We are all intelligent! All the people! So are rats and pigs and cows. Owls and chickens are intelligent, and fish and crabs and snails. Mosquitoes are intelligent. Mushrooms are intelligent. And plants are intelligent.
They make food from sunlight and water and air. Plants are fucking intelligent!
Ayesha (Ayush Gupta) is a science educator with no training in writing poems. Ayesha thanks Wree for encouraging her to express creatively with abandon and for feedback. If you want to search for the references within the poem without using AI, please feel free to use search.wree.space.