Tag: organizing

On AI discourse

I have a complicated relationship with AI discourse, especially of the online variety. On one hand, it’s interesting to see where people stand. So I follow it. On the other, most of what circulates is what Lee Vinsel describes as hype and criti-hype: positions performed and rehearsed in what amounts to a pantomime that serves the status quo (2021).

I don’t think debates online constitute a public sphere. Social media platforms profit from the circulation of ideas. The more we argue, the more engagement they capture. Jodi Dean calls this “communicative capitalism” (2003). The endless circulation of opinions doesn’t challenge power. It feeds it.

Her deeper point has stuck with me. Online discourse substitutes for political action. We post, we argue, we refine our positions in public. It feels like we’re doing something. But this activity distracts from what actually builds power: organizing, developing member-based associations (Matthew et al., 2024), creating institutions capable of sustained collective action.

This means that someone who works on AI politics, as I do, probably shouldn’t spend much time performing positions on social media. There’s real work to be done, and it doesn’t happen in threads.1

So I try to keep a distance. Not out of principle. I’m not morally opposed to posting. It’s more practical than that. The discourse isn’t where change happens. It’s where the appearance of change circulates endlessly, while power stays put.

References

Dean, J. (2003). Why the Net is not a Public Sphere. Constellations, 10(1), 95–112. https://doi.org/10/b4274w

Matthew, T., George, H., & Jonny, G.-F. (2024, June 24). Bodiless Bodies: The Rise of Para-Institutions. Damage, (2). https://damagemag.com/2024/06/24/bodiless-bodies-the-rise-of-para-institutions/

Vinsel, L. (2026, February 8). You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype. Peoples & Things. https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

  1. There is a separate discussion to be had about scholarly work and activism. On the What’s Left of Philosophy episode on Bhaskar’s critical realism (Ep. 99), the hosts stake out a middle position between pretending to be neutral and turning scholarship into activism. Good explanations are valuable in themselves: they give people who are dominated the tools to free themselves, rather than telling them what to do. Our values shape what we study and why, but admitting that doesn’t mean scholarship has to double as activism. ↩︎

Status update

This is not exactly a now page, but I thought I would write up what I am doing at the moment since last reporting on my status in my end-of-year report.

The majority of my workdays are spent doing freelance design consulting. My primary gig has been through Eend at the Dutch Victim Support Foundation, where until very recently I was part of a team building online services. I helped out with product strategy, setting up a lean UX design process, and getting an integrated agile design and development team up and running. The first services are now shipping so it is time for me to move on, after 10 months of very gratifying work. I really enjoy working in the public sector and I hope to be doing more of it in future.

So yes, this means I am available and you can hire me to do strategy and design for software products and services. Just send me an email.

Shortly before the Dutch national elections of this year, Iskander and I gathered a group of fellow tech workers under the banner of “Tech Solidarity NL” to discuss the concerning lurch to the right in national politics and what our field can do about it. This has developed into a small but active community who gather monthly to educate ourselves and develop plans for collective action. I am getting a huge boost out of this. Figuring out how to be a leftist in this day and age is not easy. The only way to do it is to practice and for that reflection with peers is invaluable. Building and facilitating a group like this is hugely educational too. I have learned a lot about how a community is boot-strapped and nurtured.

If you are in the Netherlands, your politics are left of center, and you work in technology, consider yourself invited to join.

And finally, the last major thing on my plate is a continuing effort to secure a PhD position for myself. I am getting great support from people at Delft University of Technology, in particular Gerd Kortuem. I am focusing on internet of things products that have features driven by machine learning. My ultimate aim is to develop prototyping tools for design and development teams that will help them create more innovative and more ethical solutions. The first step for this will be to conduct field research inside companies who are creating such products right now. So I am reaching out to people to see if I can secure a reasonable amount of potential collaborators for this, which will go a long way in proving the feasibility of my whole plan.

If you know of any companies that develop consumer-facing products that have a connected hardware component and make use of machine learning to drive features, do let me know.

That’s about it. Freelance UX consulting, leftist tech-worker organising and design-for-machine-learning research. Quite happy with that mix, really.