Dwayne Monroe

290 Followers
104 Following
175 Posts
In the Netherlands. I'm focused on learning and sharing information about the political and social implications of technologies such as so-called 'AI'. Also, I'm always interested in a good martini recipe, film noir, Hegel, dialectical materialism and cybernetics (as defined by Satfford Beer) applied directly to modern concerns. Let's imagine and build a different future.
Websitehttps://monroelab.com
LocationNetherlands

Reminder: Please join us on Aug. 16 2025 for the rally & sign the petition! https://chng.it/dmby4J6xdm

We now have official ok from the city police & park dept - just keep to public areas & don't block sidewalks or streets. See you on Saturday! Let's shut this dump down.

Sign the Petition

Shut Down Apple's Deadly Semiconductor Fabrication Next to Apartments & Playgrounds

Change.org
A conversation with Mtume Gant for his 'Within Our Gates' podcast about 'AI', cinema and the history of atomic tests. There is a valence: https://open.spotify.com/episode/25AtpLifz3Ezdx7D2wjdmX?si=FZHqzi9yRZueV9ti-OmP7Q
Within Our Gates - Capitalism, Tech and the Artists Tools w/ Dwayne Monroe

Within Our Gates · Episode

Spotify
There is neither gold nor glory to be found in challenging propaganda. This is all for the best. In these appearances, I chat with people I respect about the state of the ‘AI’ industry: what is happening and why. https://monroelab.com/2025/08/03/from-the-department-of-self-promotion/
From the Department of Self Promotion

There is neither gold nor glory to be found in challenging cultural assumptions. Particularly those shaped by propaganda. This is all for the best. In these appearances, I chat with people I respec…

Computational Impacts
In this conversation with Jared Ware, host of 'Millenials are Killing Capitalism', we discuss where the true danger lies in anti-labor, 'AI' propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/live/OxQ_EWinHtA?si=t34ksPPAMs0ODImC
Propaganda Masked as Critique: Jacobin and 'AI' with Dwayne Monroe

YouTube

"ChatGPT can generate plausible text. Because so many jobs involve humans speaking to each other, capitalists are drooling at the opportunity to save on all the labor costs that go into generating all this text. What they don't understand is that many human jobs involve producing language because those jobs involve human collaboration, and language is how we communicate."

@theluddite
https://theluddite.org/post/ai-research.html

🔥 saving this one

The Anti-Labor Propaganda Masquerading as Science

An anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.

In this essay, I perform an autopsy on a Jacobin published article by Holly Buck and Matt Huber that is supposedly a left analysis of the 'AI' industry but which is, in reality, industry propaganda: https://vdgasjournal.com/2025/07/24/a-castle-made-of-legos-on-jacobin-and-ai-propaganda/
A Castle Made of Legos – On Jacobin and AI Propaganda

In the age of live streamed genocide, many things that once seemed urgent, or at least, worth a few moments of your time, have receded to the background; chores to be completed as illusions are bur…

Verdigris
@synte Many thanks for your interest and the boosts! As I recall, Beer himself, as far back as the 1980s, recognized that digital computation (as opposed to other forms) is ontologically opposed to an understanding of complexity. I think this is because it is a command and control method for capital as I detail here: https://monroelab.com/2025/02/23/command-and-control-capitalism-and-computation/
Command and Control: Capitalism and Computation

Capitalism, a system as inescapable as breathless news items about Trump, Musk and decay, came into its own during the age of steam power, telegraphs and colonialism (first edition, we’re wit…

Computational Impacts

The note to make on this post is the domain. Fly is an hosting company so if “AI lets us go faster” and “AI makes bad code but we’re slowing down to make it usable” (paraphrased) is their self-contradictory policy, that puts a question mark on hosting with them

https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/

Also, going “many of you will lose your jobs but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” is almost admirable as a douchebag move, but it’s also the norm in tech. There is no class solidarity to speak of in tech.

My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

My smartest friends have bananas arguments about LLM coding.

Fly

So, effectively “LLMs for coding” are largely a cover story for improving throughput by relaxing quality standards

The other issue is that “go faster” on coding without a corresponding increase in attention to other parts of software development and design seems to be just shifting the performance cost onto other parts of the org, at least in the cases and studies I’ve seen