It Could Happen Here - Alienation and AI feat. Andrew

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Andrew and James talk about how artificial intelligence has created alienation in societySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHHHRoll. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Andrew Siege, otherwise known as Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm here with... James. Just James. Don't have a YouTube.

More than just James. I mean, I love talking to you. So you're more than just James to me. Oh, thank you, Andrew. That's very sweet. I enjoy these two. It's a fun for me. Yeah, so really I'd like to get into one of the hotter topics as of late. Not the heat, though that is a hot topic, but.

Yeah. AI artificial intelligence. Oh, good. Yeah, my favorite thing. Yeah. And more specifically, the ways in which AI has contributed to and accentuated alienation and the capitalism and the state in the 24th century. So that's a mouthful, but it's obviously very important.

Okay. Yeah, I like it so a lot. In my opinion, alienation, with all its meanings really, is one of those words that you can really use to describe the current sideguise. The experience of separation from yourself, from your work, from the products of your work, from your community, all these things, both philosophical and material, get wrapped up into this concept of alienation. Because it's both an experience.

It's something that people like, feel internally. It describes the way that they see their lives. And it's also just a fact of how people work in society. You're dispossessed of the products of your labor and you're disconnected from the process of your labor and the outcomes of your labor. And this is of course all thanks to development of capitalism and industrialization and this development of a mass society, quote unquote, with all the apathy and loss of agency and weakened social fabric that generates. Yeah, I think alienation is like something we don't talk about enough.

It's like the thing that ties together. The despair, the loneliness, the loneliness. Like loneliness is maybe like, it's a way that capitalism has come to talk about alienation without acknowledging that capitalism is creating alienation. Every sort of developed states in the colonial core. I have acknowledged that loneliness is a problem, right? I saw Gavin Newsom was launching a loneliness campaign. But, like, the system is a problem.

The alienation is created by the way that things are. And, like, we can't fix it without changing the way that things are. Exactly, exactly. It comes down to the conditions. I mean, in particular, I think we see alienation manifesting most in our relationships, of course, and in our work. And it's been an issue for some decades. decades now. And what I'm really intrigued by is, you know, this has been an issue for a while, but

how is AI interacting with these issues? How is AI impacting the alienation that we already experience under the system? Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm currently teaching a class at the community college. It's a class about pre-600 history. And like, I teach a little bit every year, right but every year I've seen more AI use but this year has just fully blackpilled me like I don't quite know how to describe the feelings I'm experiencing I guess but I at this class I assign like David Graber I assigned Jim Scott I assign Charles Tilley on state making a war making right like very basic left libertarian kind of text right which for many people will be the first time they encounter the concept of like what if no state what if state bad and i think they're all

writing in a way that's very approachable to people who don't you know like dense academic writing is is annoying and and pretentious and i i don't like it every time i do this course it used to be the case that like 30 to 40 percent the students would be like holy fuck whether they like it or not it's a new concept and it's cool and they engage with it in like a passionate way a human way. Every year, it's got worse. And now, like, I can think of two students out of 100 who are, like, engaging with it in any human way. And I'm sure most of them, I would imagine they've either AI summarized the text, or in many cases, they certainly have used AI to just respond. I let my students respond in ways that they feel appropriate, right? So, like, they could

do videos or different things if they wanted to, like a, they wanted to make a video about instead of doing an essay. That's fine with me. care. I just want them to read the shit and think about it. But, like, there's been no human reaction. And that's so sad to me. Like, the reason they teach is to get young people to see the world differently. It certainly isn't for the fucking money. And that's just, I'm, I'm incapable of doing that now. Or, like, I can't get through that alienation that, like, I can't, like, get people to engage and, like, think about it. Obviously, I've got to work that shit out, right? There's, like, this generation of people who, who went

through high school when AI was a thing and detecting AI use in long form writing was not very well developed. So they were able to use it instead of doing long form writing and maybe even reading long form. And like I have to work out how to get those people to engage not to be so sort of alienated from the concept of reading and absorbing big ideas. But I haven't fucking worked it out yet. Yeah. It's a really big issue and it's only growing. You know, as AIX, man's not so much the focus of this episode but it is something

that I wanted to touch on you know people used to be doing fine without it used to be able to function without it three years ago and now you talk to them and it's like they can't live without it they have to run everything through AI you know people have offloaded

most of their cognitive processes to AI yeah yeah you know and obviously you know we talk about the environmental impact of that the way the data sense enters the damage in the environment, taking fresh water and taking a vast amounts of energy from the system. So we all rely upon to live. And, you know, we could, as you touched on,

talk about how schools and the education system is pretty much falling apart. Yeah. I mean, I know you're one of those, you know, genuinely passionate professors, but I've noticed is there's this whole farce now in many sections of the education system where you have students AI summarizing material if they're even doing that you know, submit an AI generated essays or AI generated

material and the professor is just AI created. Yeah, I've heard of this. So it's just one, one big puppet show. You know, one big fuss. God. Yeah, yeah, exactly. One big charade, which

to an extent education has always just been that right, one big farce, but there are things that are redeemable about it. And I'm talking just talking about teaching now. And I'll stop in a minute. There's very little demand for in-person classes compared to online classes anymore. So, like, that makes it harder for us to break through that alienation, right? Like, there's something special about sitting in a room and talking just, just fine.

It's just like being like, we're going to be here for 90 minutes. None of us are leaving. It's a dynamic. Yeah. And it's an important dynamic. Like the function of the university is that if I can turn out people with STEM degrees who can go on and make shitty apps we don't need. It's to prepare us to be citizens in the community.

Exactly. And we are failing at that. And since yet, instead, I'm just grade and chat GPT all day, no. Yeah, and that's a big piece of the puzzle that we end up missing because the way in which the sort of dynamics and the connections that you would get from the university class, or beyond just social. connections in general, it's lacking in the alienated world. And it's worsened by, you know, the introduction of AI. I managed to complete most of my education, most of my bachelor's degree that is

prior to the pandemic, right? I was near in the end of my third year when lockdown, you know, came into force. And then I just, I did my entire fourth year online. And honestly, I'm so glad that I was able to do my classes in person, you know, and I'm so glad that I did my classes, you know, entirely on my own in a time where, you know, yeah, I was not a thing. You know, there were times where, you know, it probably feels like, oh, my God, it's so stressful. But you just had to buckle down. Yeah. Yeah, to buckle down and figure out a way to get it done. And of course, we could talk about the perverse incentives of breeding systems and schools and how that sort of pushes some students who, you know, may have learning difficulties or time management difficulties or whatever to actually do their stuff.

They end up going down the air route. But, I mean, even just looking back at my experience, because lockdown hits during the semester, I had a writing class that I was a part of. And every time we went into class, it was so dynamic, it was so lively, it was so engaging. All the ideas were just bouncing off of each other. Yeah. After the lockdown, that class completely visible out. everything that we were getting from it was just absent because we were entirely

online and it's really a struggle and I think social life, not just coming out of the education conversation, social life, community and connection all ends up lacking because of the alienating nature of the system, the way

that things have been set up, but also AI is playing a major role too. AI in a sense as a category is you know, you can have a whole discussion about that quibble over definitions, but in a sense, AI has already been playing a major role into how people socialize even before these large language models came to be in, because you have a sort of artificial intelligence in the algorithms that people interact with on social media. You know,

people have the content they consume being curated by algorithms. They end up in these sort of echo chambers, his reinforcement loops, in outrage, be it and in dopamine loops, and all those things have lent it to people spending more and more time online because, you know, it's hitting that part of the brain and everybody's hyper-connected and always online and one more of life takes place on the internet, and that has left people feeling isolated.

Yeah. I think loneliness is obviously not entirely the result of social media and now AI, but the sort of irony is that loneliness has been a side effect of this digital

hyperconnection. Yeah. When you look at some of the factors that are contributing to this, this already isolated nature of our world, right? You know, people don't have as much free time. You know, there's in as much public space as there used to be. Some people have no public space available to

them. Or public spaces that do exist are not open in the times when people are available to go to them. Libraries are a famous example. A lot of them are, you know, not open for working people, pretty much. And then people who do want to go out and socialize and stuff, you know, you're dealing with a higher cost of living. So there's little resources that you can use to, you know, go on, put yourself out there because you have to spend money to go to places.

And then it also just burns out energy-wise because of, you know, the long work week, the long work hours just trying to make ends meet. psychological toll of that. Yeah. And so part of what AI has been doing is pushing these AI companions on people. And, you know, I don't mean to fear monger or anything, because I know there are a lot of people who reject AI and who stand against AI. And of course, that could just be the bubble that I'm in.

But yeah, I also know somebody in person, or rather I knew somebody in person who spoke to chat GPT like their partner and therapist yeah they list like it's I mean it's sad yeah it's as you said almost kind of

black pillet you know because these chat bots they listen in a simulated sense they respond in a simulated sense and they affirm what the person

is dealing with is going through his venting about they're almost like a hug box because you don't really see chatbots disagreeing with the people they're speaking to chat bots are very much like you know fawning they you know they they try the best to affirm everything that a person is telling them so you have this kind of cuddle box for people's equals which in two makes it even more difficult for them to connect to real people because you know real people are going to call you out um you know they're going to disagree with you. You're going to have friction and conflict.

Yeah. But there's also a lot of joy. It comes from interacting with real people. And unfortunately, a lot of people, because they're not getting that, they're turning to this on-demand affection, this on-demand flirtation, this pseudo-therapy. And it's brutal. You know, loneliness is a brutal experience. Relationships are very hard and therapy is extremely expensive for a lot of people.

Yeah. So I understand that. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream?

A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back everyone. He's got next! And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe,

starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The devil walks in Abistown. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,

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The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A.Z. Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.

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A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

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lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, you could only put so much blame on individuals because the world is not really set up

to support those kind of lasting connections. People live very spread out. They have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with each other. In fact, a lot of times, the last time a person had extended exposure with other people was in school or in college, and outside of that, you're just kind of on your own. Yeah. And places are increasingly not walkable, they're more car centric.

The sort of spontaneity and friction and interaction that would have made relationships blossom naturally and may relationships possibly. It may really it's just possible as messy and inconveniences they can be sometimes. Those things are lacking now. And unfortunately, some fraction of people, I don't know what the actual number would be, because I could imagine a lot of people would not admit that they turn into a chat part for companionship. But it is a frightening woman of what direction we're going in. And I also worry about the potential outcomes of, you know, eclick behavior that might result from that sort of continuous interaction with something that is affirming your every belief and thought and conclusion.

What kind of Google will be going to be there with, you know? Yeah. It's the world that are super rich people already live in. One of the reasons that the gulf between the rest of us and the super rich, like the really, you know, incredibly wealthy people, part of that is that no one says no to a lot of those people. And that's why they exclusively end up socializing with each other, right? Like, they're, they're surrounded by nothing but affirmation.

Right. One of the things we see was Trump, right, is that, like, if there is a reality that he doesn't like, he manifests his own reality, he just speaks things and, expects them to be accepted as truths, right? Growing up, my dad worked for a lot of extremely wealthy people, and so I've interacted with them. And, like, there's a lot of people who just aren't used to hearing no or why, but not a lot, but there's a number of them.

And, like, I think when you see, I was just thinking about it, the behavior that, you know, didn't Trump now asserting with the Epstein thing, it's like it's made up, right? And it's a hoax. And it just, when we were talking about AI, it sort of reminds me of that, right? that constant affirmation. Because what AI wants to do is to please you so that you spend more time on it, I assume, and there's some way that it attempts to monetize that, I'm sure. And it just wants you to keep interacting with it so it can get more information to take into its model, I guess.

Yeah, the data called Rush. Yeah, right. And people are doing the same with wealthy people, where they just want to interact with them such that they can siphon off some of the resources that those people have accumulated. Maybe it's not the same. I think that still humans interacting with wealthy people is distinct from an AI interacting with humans, but it sort of gives us a window into what the impact of that being most of your human interaction over time. Indeed. Indeed. And as we speak of wealthy people, I suppose we should look at the other way in which AI is intersecting with alienation, right? Because, you know, for the current narrative has been about, you know, AI has taken jobs. And before then, it was about how automation was taking

jobs. AI is a form of automation. And before that, it was just innovations in general, just steps in some technological direction would be eliminating jobs. What I always marvel at stepping back and looking at the whole

conversation about this is taking jobs that has taken jobs is at the root of it is this dependence on employment, on jobs, for people to have life, to be able to live, to have a quality of life. We have gotten more and more productive, and I mean, that productivity has helped people in some ways and it's harmed the environment in a lot of ways.

But we have a certain level of productivity now, and we've produced so much now that in some sectors we have more than enough for several decades to come. I think fashion is one of them where we have quite the excess of clothing for everybody. And of course, you could talk about how that level of productivity has done damage to, or creativity or craftsmanship. But it's all the worst when you think about how, even with all that productivity, the workers have hardly benefited. You know,

more productivity doesn't necessarily mean more pay. And so even before AI came around, we were having issues with labor and alienation, right? People disconnected from their work, from whether it be a service job, a factory job, or delivery job,

whatever. Any of these jobs that you look at, it's structured at the end of the day, not around providing a product of providing a service, but around profit, around the power dynamic between the owner, the capitalist, and the worker, the worker who is not in control, is alienated from their labour and from the products of their labour. And it's what Marks famously spoke about, but he wasn't the only one to speak about it. Yeah. This sort of alienated labour that is compelled rather

than creative that has no control of work and where workers are treated as commodities in a labor market. Thankfully, I haven't had to look for a job in a while, but I've had to see my friends seeking jobs and it's not a nice

experience. You have to spend weeks, months, sometimes looking for a job that you will most likely hate, but you need to survive. Yeah. You know, and a lot of these jobs you end up looking for end up getting into,

and not even necessary jobs or a lot of bullshit jobs and they don't contribute to a person's development, fulfillment, or they could have humanity in any way. Yeah. And then a lot of the benefits that people have fought for, even for these jobs,

have either been eroded, you know, rolled back over time, or they've been loopholed out. So, you know, for example, you don't even get enough hours to qualify for benefits when you work at certain places. Or you are an independent contractor instead of an employee so they can get away from, you know, giving you a due.

And so then in this environment, you have AI coming in now and taking certain rules, varying levels of quality and writing and in art and coding and administrative work. And I don't know, I think for one, AI does a lot of these jobs very poorly. But then there's also cases where I don't like copyrighting, which is something I used to do. The AI copyrighted and the sort of copyrighting that I had to write as back in the days, almost indistinguishable in terms of it feels generic, pointless, you know, slop-like. It's just you're pumping this out to pollute the airwaves in a sense. Yeah, it's very like it has a very formulaic nature when a human does. it's funny when I think about copywriting right like um you can see that people have identified

the completely generic nature of it because occasionally you'll have like brands who do it in a non-formulic way and and briefly see success from it like just by by having some element of humanity in it yeah like wendy's when they did that for a while and yeah then every brand copy that method and then it became steel yeah yeah someone will sometimes like puncture it for a minute and then, like you say, everyone will run after it. Like, and then Pit Viper sunglasses is one. I guess they're very popular with, like, right-wing bigots. Every time, like, bigots are patron in their sunglasses,

they'll, like, donate money to LGBTQ affirming causes or, like, gender affirming care stuff or whatever. It depends what the people are being bigoted about. And, like, briefly, I saw them have success with that just because, like, people are so accustomed to Brandt being apolitical rather than just being, like, no, fuck you. So, like, by doing the kind of basics of being a good person, person. It appears human and therefore not so generic are people, you know, briefly fall in love

with it or whatever. Yeah. But I mean, at the end of the day, although corporations are not persons, there are people behind corporations. Yeah. And I guess I sort of wonder with these kinds of jobs that are now being built in, at least in part by AI, what is the impact on a person's self worth for their skill to be just sort of swapped out for a machine. A lot of people have already felt that their work is non-essential, and then you have a sense of being replaceable and unneeded, and in some cases the difference is negligible, because like I said, the work that was already being put out was the sort of generic stuff that it sort of fills paper

and fills screens but then you also have more necessary the more creative work that is also just being sort of funneled out and I'm seeing billboards all over the place

that just have like just nasty smooth looking like AI generated pictures yeah just a lot of slop you know slop content slop ad

slop emails you know even on YouTube now like I like to listen to these sort of music mixes when I work sometimes, and most of the channels being recommended for music mixes on YouTube nowadays, at least in the genres

that I would listen to, it's just like AI generated jazz chill. The thing is they don't title it that way. Yeah. You know, they type it some word and they probably haven't somewhat AI generated thumbnail and whatever. And then you just, you know, if you're unaware of the pattern

of how those channels operate, you might click on and think, and oh, it's just like a music mix, like every other music mix. And then you listen to it for a while and you listen to a few of them and you realize, oh, this is just like a machine made this. It has no flavor. Yeah, like no soul. There's also a lot of articles that are just filling the internet.

It's just like, slow. Yeah, yeah. You know, just AI generated articles that feed into the AI pool of references. And so the AI almost eats itself. Yeah. And it's sad. But I think it was like we were always going in this. direction in a sense not to say that it was entirely inevitable but this was the trajectory that we

were pointed at this was actually could have been changed but to know it hasn't been so that's how we kind of got here there's a vile sickness in abbesstown you must excise it dig into the deep earth and cut it out the village is ravaged entire family have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back, everyone. He's going to next.

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction, podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Aberstown.

Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show. And we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancée Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?

The final. The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate. You can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candice Parker. and college superstar A. Z. Fudd.

I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Smokey the Bears.

Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees you passing through. Remember, please be careful. It's the least that you can do. It's what you desire. Don't play with matches. Don't play with fire. After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips, Smokey Bear lives within us all.

Learn more at smokybear.com. And remember, Only you can prevent wildfires. Brought to you by the USDA Forest Service, your state forester and the ad council. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up,

good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer, screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like there was a time. when, boy, it may still be true that

a slough first is not always a good thing. There's something to be said about the value that we imbue to things when they are a bit rarer. You know, when it's, you have to be more attentive and engaging with it.

You know, I was actually thinking about it earlier today. When I was a child and I was watching TV, you know, if they didn't have anything on the TV that I wanted to watch or I have to go and do something else, right? Yeah. And nowadays, TV is pretty much

unlimited because at any point in time you couldn't have access to anything that an algorithm could see if you're up there is perfectly curated to your interests. Yeah. And it's autoplay and everything. It's just one hit after the next. In that excess, I just feel like we've lost the sort of attentive curation of your taste, curation of, and valuation of things, of the effort and energy and craft goes into making things. We just end up sort of taking things. We just end up sort of taking things for granted. And like, I think we kind of lower the standard that we will accept because it's just so much of it.

There's so much volume of it. Yeah, like, and you're not so attentive to it because it's always there that like slop becomes okay. It just kind of fills the gaps in this nonstop stream of content. Yeah, it's just filling the noise. I have to catch myself sometimes. Yeah, because I mean, just like, sometimes I just put something on. Yeah.

Because it was there, you know, and I just fill the noise. Sometimes I have to remind myself, yo, pause, just be with your thoughts for a bit, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I try not to put too much blame on myself, even as I try to work on it, because all of this, once a year, and is by design. Yeah. You know, these platforms and these algorithms have been set up to perfectly, they've perfectly honed to their ability to exploit the little shortcuts and weaknesses in human mind to engage us for as long as possible. Yeah.

Like, so even if you feel like, oh my gosh, I want to get off those media, I want to quit this, that, the other. It's hard. Yeah. You know, even when you know in your mind that it's detrimental, that it's affecting you negatively, you still end up going back because, again, it's hacked into your brain in a sense. Yeah.

I'm just really frustrated by the way that AI has contributed. to this sort of disconnect because I also think it makes the whole breath of human creativity a lot less valued, practiced and supported, you know, instead of people actually respecting and, you know, supporting the craft and the effort that goes into things, it's just like, oh, scroll to the next thing, scroll to the next thing. Or for some people who seem to love AI art, It's just, oh, yeah, you're obsolete now. You can be replaced by this, you know, junk. I was just thinking about, like, art.

Like, I see it so often in, like, even in revolutionary spaces, I'll see it, right? Like, there, I guess sometimes is what it is actually is AI accounts that have no idea what a revolution is. They're incapable of doing so because they're not human. But, like, I just designed to monetize clicks. You know, you'll see there's a bunch of fucking Israel stands with Kurdistan. ads, which will just, like, AI generate pictures of Yepage women, like the women who fight for the A&ES, right? And, like, it's just, I don't think that these are not, again, people are actually part of the revolution, right? There are people who just, who want to, in a sense,

objectify the revolution and the women who fought in it and continued to fight in it for financial benefit. But, like, it is the antithesis of the beautiful life that people are trying to build there. right like it is the opposite of everything that that revolution stands for so you see and people like AI generating these female fighters yeah yes exactly and then using that for some either just straight because you get paid per click on on X now right or for some nefarious propaganda bullshit but like it's and then by contrast right my friends in In Myanmar, there's a group called Art Strike Collective who do these cool drawings of various individuals who have fought in the revolution. And, like, one is a beautiful thing that shows your respect for these people, many of whom have given their life for this revolution.

And another is just complete fucking slop that is actively harming the thing it's supposed to be supporting. Yeah. Unfortunately, and it's a cliche at this point, but many such cases. Yeah, yeah. I saw this short lecture on YouTube by a professor, I think professor's name is Jiam. There's such a short clip from, I'm assuming, a longer lecture. He said the title of the video is really what captured me. It was something along the lines of consumerism as the perfection of slavery.

And it was really speaking about how we are able to be so perfectly locked into our role as workers, as cogs in this machine. that to become, you know, so docile because of just how good the consumeristic system has gotten at keeping us chasing that next, you know, dopamine hit, that next purchase, that next thing to consume, you know, so we're still being exploited. We are still wages, slaves, in a sense. But we are either unaware of it or we accept that role just to chase after. you know, the next high of consumption. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like when you think about like Brave New World in 1984, right, these two dystopian novels, roughly, I mean, A Brave New World came out before 1984, right? The difference is one is like a boot stamping on the human face forever, which is 1984.

And Huxley's dystopia is based on people being essentially bought off through pleasure, right? Yeah, it's like unlimited cocaine for everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They call it, what's it called somer, I think? Right. We're in the unlimited cocaine for everyone world, right? Like, it's stuff. I mean, I think we're in both.

You know, it's simultaneously, a Huxley, and an O'Eleon, and dystopia, you know, worst of both worlds. Yeah, you're right. I'm starting to read Jack London's dystopia, the iron heel now. I've decided I want to work out who was best calling the dystopia. But yeah, we have a little bit of both now. We have the, they'll get you at both ends, right? they'll try and give you things to keep you placid and then also things to keep you afraid. Indeed.

Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to despair. You know, people just blindly embrace an AI and they don't see the problem with using AI and all these different things. There's also, as I like to end things on, reason to hope, right? There are people who are willing to boycott it, who are, you know, maintaining a stigma around it. You know, people are not taking it lying down. Artists are not taking it lying down. Yeah.

Writers are not taking it lying down. Designers are not taking it line down. People are still craving the authenticity connection and craft that comes from human people. And although there is little any individual can do to resist the alienation of this society, whether it be at work or with relationships by themselves, you know, it's very hard. There are things we can do together in tandem to make things a little bit easier as we sort of try and strive toward social revolution. There's the classic touchgrass, you know, log off and

try and find where people are. There's also the individualist solution of reclaiming your agency by finding some version of digital minimalism that works for you, you know, taking a break, soon and out limiting your screen time here and there but really it's going to take system change it's going to take collective action

it's going to take us boycotting both you know of course the AI products there's a boycott already taking place with those but also just striking at the pressure point of the system and prefiguring a better world for everyone

and you know I hope that everybody is able to do they can to take steps in that direction. And yeah, so please don't use AI. Yeah, yeah. I think I always like that subcommandante Marcos quote where he says like it's not necessary to conquer the world. It's sufficient to build a new one. I like that approach to this AI stuff. The way we make it so people in our community don't turn to AI to talk about things they want to talk about is to be there for them to talk to, right? To build community, to build real human, in terms of interactions with each other, so people don't have real human conversations with the computer.

Absolutely. Agreed. Yeah. And that's all I have for today. So all the people, this has been, it could happen here. I've been Andrew. This has been James and that's it. Yeah.

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