Blueprints of Disruption is one of the best Canada-based podcasts about actually left wing politics. By that, we mean being anticapitalist, not “left” according to the busted Overton Window. NDP leadership isn’t really left, and nor is Scandinavian social democracy, or The (AOC) Squad in the US.

Jessa McLean grew up in a proud working class labour union family that supported the NDP. Jessa worked very hard for the NDP for decades, and even was a candidate at one point. But like all good people with firsthand inside experience of the NDP, she eventually discovered that NDP leadership (not membership) are a bunch of neoliberals barely distinguishable from the corporate leadership of the Liberals and Conservatives.

Kim has appeared on the show multiple times, but this is Neha’s debut as a guest. Neha is also a member of Stop Gen AI, and they have professional experience working with a type of AI that is often useful, machine learning. So they had great insight about how “Gen AI” is nothing like forms of AI that existed before 2018. Machine learning applications that train on carefully selected and ethically acquired medical data aren’t killing the planet, nor is it being used by our billionaire overlords to replace all paid human labour. The simple scripting full of “else” and “if” statements that makes monsters in video games react to player actions in certain ways is also harmless. It’s possible that the Sam Altmans of the world are calling their torment nexuses “Gen AI” to confuse people who aren’t computer scientists.

Jessa may not be a computer nerd, but she understands how evil capitalism is, and she also doesn’t like how the evil tech giants like Microsoft and Google are trying to make Gen AI usage unavoidable.

So we had a great conversation about the ways Gen AI is destroying the planet, making billions of people poorer, and killing people’s ability to think for themselves.

Please listen and share.

https://podfollow.com/blueprints-of-disruption/episode/9f64545f545851dce98e5e3feb36ea82bb3f5fcf/view

And here’s a link to the Patreon for the Blueprints of Distruption podcast!

https://www.patreon.com/bpofdisruption