Mastodawn

Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.

That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.

Nicole Parsons Mar 18

The same arguments are used to thwart public safety on guns. Disingenuous "People kill people, not guns".

AI is a net negative.

1. It wastes fossil fuel & worsens climate change. It pushes up gas prices, electricity & water rates.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/electricity-price-data-center-ai-inflation-goldman.html

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-companies-data-centers-electricity-trump-administration-df665913

https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/

2. It's used to automate information pollution & cyberwarfare, like covid disinformation & election meddling by hostile foreign powers like Putin

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Nicole Parsons Mar 18

2/

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/03/how-cognitive-manipulation-and-ai-will-shape-disinformation-in-2026/

https://www.ft.com/content/ceb33440-e0bd-46da-9be0-d4ac27d5a19a
https://archive.is/lpbdh

Accusations are confessions
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-accuses-iran-using-ai-spread-disinformation-2026-03-16/

3. It's funded by soulless people like Koch, Putin, #PrinceBonesaw, Elon Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel who want a technofascist aristocracy, not democracy
https://www.politico.com/video/2016/02/donald-trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated-044575

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/07/17/bill-gates-charles-koch-and-three-other-billionaires-are-giving-1-billion-to-enhance-economic-mobility-in-the-us/

https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-marc-andreessen-have-a-soul/?edition=us

https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/kleiner-perkins-andreessen-horowitz-lead-investment-1-billion-neolab

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/thiel-epstein-barak-ai-israel

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/03/17/peter-thiel-criticizes-the-giving-pledge-steers-billionaires-477004/

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4. It's used for mass layoffs, rent & price fixing, & wage suppression
https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-are-blaming-massive-layoffs-on-ai-whats-really-going-on-278314

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/meta-ai-costs-mass-layoffs-20percent-up-premarket.html

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/atlassian-ai-layoffs

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/block-ai-layoffs-jack-dorsey

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/26/ai-mass-layoffs/88888700007/

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-odd-settlement-on-rent-fixing

https://jacobin.com/2025/12/realpage-ai-rent-raising-lawsuit

https://www.levernews.com/tech-giant-says-ai-has-a-first-amendment-right-to-raise-your-rent/

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/states-target-ai-that-tells-companies-how-much-to-pay-workers

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/washington-post-price-ai

https://globalnews.ca/video/11734019/meta-reportedly-planning-mass-layoffs-to-offset-ai-costs

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/laptop-prices-expected-to-soar-by-around-40-percent-as-ai-crunch-takes-hold-analyst-says-rising-mainstream-models-priced-at-usd900-could-hit-more-than-usd1-200-due-to-rising-memory-storage-and-cpu-costs

https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/05/12/the-gig-trap/algorithmic-wage-and-labor-exploitation-in-platform-work-in-the-us

https://futurism.com/freelancers-struggling-compete-ai

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/uber-lawsuit-ai-driven-pay-systems

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/article/block-lays-off-nearly-half-its-staff-because-of-ai-its-ceo-said-most-companies-will-do-the-same/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/salesforce-ceo-confirms-4-000-layoffs-because-i-need-less-heads-with-ai/ar-AA1LKqBS

Tech companies are blaming massive layoffs on AI. What’s really going on?

Amazon, Block and Atlassian have announced AI-driven job cuts, and Meta is reportedly planning its own – but all may not be as it seems.

The Conversation

Nicole Parsons Mar 18

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5. It's used for fraud, scams, stock market manipulation, & war crimes

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-27-econopocalypse-subprime-intelligence-e9a06136d109

https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/ed-zitron-interview-big-tech-ai-criticism.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/28/nvidia-insists-it-isnt-enron-but-its-ai-deals-are-testing-investor-faith

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/mit-study-shatters-ai-hype-95-of-generative-ai-projects-are-failing-sparking-tech-bubble-jitters/articleshow/123428252.cms

https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-man-calling-bullshit-on-the-ai

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-beginning-of-history/

https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/

https://newrepublic.com/article/207189/iran-war-ai-deciding-bombs-drop

6. It's used to destroy privacy, erode civil rights, & enact state surveillance
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/

https://www.techpolicy.press/how-ice-uses-ai-to-automate-authoritarianism/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/viral-ai-ice-raid-videos_l_69163baee4b0df3e16be4163

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ice-agents-caught-wearing-meta-ai-smart-glasses-record-monitor-communities-during-immigration-1784703

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/07/ai-texas-ice-mn-tech

The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

Sweating (the assets) to the oldies.

Medium

Nicole Parsons Mar 18

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In any technology, power imbalances play an important role.

As Cory Doctorow points out, it's a form of brain damage to deny the role power plays in economics. Ditto for AI.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-deportation-machine-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-thomson-reuters-clear-trump

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/ai-chatbots-psychosis

https://theweek.com/world-news/grok-eu-deepfake-porn-probe-elon-musk-ai

https://www.thefp.com/p/grok-is-making-porn-from-peoples-pictures

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2026/jan/13/governments-taking-action-on-grok-due-to-ai-genera/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/02/elon-musk-grok-porn-generator/

The Data Brokers Fueling ICE’s Deportation Machine—And the Union Shareholders Fighting Back

"As investors, we are thinking about this as a risk to our investments, but also as a social and ethical issue.”

In These Times