What If AI Is the Noose?

Not only are they selling it to us, they're shoving it down our throats.

I have a theory…

Problem is, anyone whom I tell this theory to thinks I’m crazy. You’re likely to think I’m crazy. I’m not a hundred percent sure I’m not crazy. So, we’re all on this path together.

The theory is this:

AI is the noose they promised us the capitalists would sell us in order to hang them.

That’s a provocative statement, I know. I don’t intend it to be. I workshopped it a bunch of times in my head, trying to make it sound less exciting and more believable, but I don’t think there’s a better way to put it. I have a feeling that this is the fruit born from the system’s own seed of self-destruction.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of this noose, it’s alternately attributed to Karl Marx, Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and a bunch of other guys with conspicuous facial hair. Here’s a version apparently attributed to Lenin…

"They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."

Also, from Quote Investigator…

The earliest strong match located by QI appeared in 1955 within a periodical called “The Commonwealth: Official Journal of the Commonwealth Club of California”. The club is a non-profit public affairs organization. The quotation appeared as a filler item.

Lenin wrote, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.”
—Major George Racey Jordan

And, to be clear, I’m saying AI is, or has the potential to be, that rope. Provided we take it and use it correctly.

Now it’s put up or shut up time for me with this theory, right? I’m making a bold claim. Can I back it up? I don’t know! I’m curious, too! How in the world can this corporate-owned and operated technology—that’s bleeding the environment dry and, I’m certain, contributing heavily to my ongoing unemployment—possibly be seen as a threat to the oligarchy?! I sound like a fucking idiot!

Here’s the thing, though: We have it, too. I mean, they’re making certain of it. You can’t fucking google a beef stew recipe without being slapped in the face with some shitty AI answer to your questions, lest you accidentally provide valuable clicks to the people from whom they stole the recipe. It’s in our phones! You are not allowed to not have AI! It’s fucking infuriating!

But, like I said, that means we have it. Whether we like it or not, we have it. So, we might as well use it. But we don’t have to use it for the things they tell us to use it for. We can use it for whatever we want.

Now, obviously, a lot of people are going to use AI for a lot of shitty stuff. Especially people working in the interests of big institutions. But there’s more of us. Way, way more of us. It’s not even close. It’s why they have to work so hard to keep us disempowered and under control. But at the same time, they’re gag-feeding us the most powerful communication tool the world has ever seen! (In a way not dissimilar from the orgy of guns they’re forcing us to live in.) We’re going to figure out a lot of ways to fuck with them and their revenue streams. And by the time they figure out their mistake, it’ll way be too late.

It’s already way too late. For them. Not for us. For us, this a chance at a new start. And an opportunity to decide the way forward.

I have a lot more to say about this.