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“Well I’m heavenly blessed and worldly wise

I’m a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes

Things are going great, and they’re only getting better

I’m doing alright, getting good grades

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades”

– Timbuk 3, The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades [1]

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The Mayworks Festival is a series of events throughout the month of May, exploring and celebrating workers lives, struggles and future aspirations. Included in the lineup is International Workers Day, or May Day, in which multiple locations around the planet proudly celebrate labour and the working class in parades and song. [2]

However, in 2024, with all the troops in the office, in the factory, in the field, in the streets taking their stands in the ultimate class war, one new figure has emerged and is poised to set the battle back in favour of the bosses. This stranger is new in town, but is easily identified by two letters: AI.

Artificial Intelligence, at least in its current form already threatens to take our jobs away from us. During the Viva Technology Conference in Paris a couple of weeks ago, billionaire Elon Musk asserted his conviction that Artificial Intelligence will ultimately eliminate the need for people to work.

“The question will really be one of meaning, of how — if a computer can do, and the robots can do everything better than you … does your life have meaning?…That really will be the question in that benign scenario, and in the negative scenario, all bets are off where we’re in deep trouble.” [3]

But these sorts of scenarios dreamed up by hype-ists don’t account for other far more sinister properties of AI. As it stands right now, this technology needs to be fed. And the basic components come from mining minerals, like cobalt and coltan. We have seen how the need to mine these components was linked to wide-spread genocides of millions of people in Congo. But a necessary price to pay for intelligent machines improving our lives? [4]

Worse, these devices are not just tools of “the bosses,” their first test drives at their origin were in the military. In particular, in Vietnam dedicated to the surveillance, planning, target acquisition, and destruction of Viet-cong infrastructure. The program was called Phoenix Program, referred to by a CIA officer after the war as “computerized mass murder.” [5]

Variations of this program were used decades later by the Israeli Defense Forces against occupied Palestine. Or in counter-insurgency operations in Latin America. Mechanized murder, courtesy of your “friendly neighbourhood AI.” [6]

The glow of this technological marvel is on the horizon, so bright we have to wear shades. And will soon have measurable impacts changing our lives forever. What should we do? How can we prepare for increased power and yet more limited alternatives? These are the themes we are exploring in the latest chapter of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, we speak to writer and teacher Dr. T. P. Wilkinson, author of the article Returning to the 11th Century: Before You Leave, Turn Out the Lights. He will share insights into artificial intelligence spawning from an early encounter with professor of computer science and early pioneer of AI Joseph Weizenbaum. He will chat about AI not escaping the design of its predecessors or of the mission ultimately as eliminating skilled labour.

In our second half hour, we are joined by science fiction author, blogger and activist Cory Doctorow who shares his view that the threat is imposed, ultimately not from AI itself, but from the system in which it is ensconced, and how we can still work collectively to repels its influence.

Finally, we share time with Mojmir Babacek, who has been active for decades trying to stop covert use of pulsed microwave radiation from affecting and actually controlling the minds of people without their consent! He speaks on this subject and the thought of AI manipulating this process.

Dr. T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently THE BEZZLE (a followup to RED TEAM BLUES) and THE LOST CAUSE, a solarpunk science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His most recent nonfiction book is THE INTERNET CON: HOW TO SEIZE THE MEANS OF COMPUTATION, a Big Tech disassembly manual. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in  communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.  

(Global Research News Hour Episode 435)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.