I know there's naivete in my world view - I'm consistently reminded of it. I'll be corrected with the facts of the way the world is, the general tone feeling slightly patronising, as if I don't know that world order is as it is.

But this shitstorm is crazy, even if we all expected it. When is enough enough?

It makes you want to scream to the screaming sky.

Why is morality constantly sacrificed? Why are the guardrails and laws and safety measures against actions we can (mostly) agree are concerning being contested and obliterated? Dumb questions we probably all know the answer to, which doesn't help much.

I don't even know where to start, and in fact I have a lot to say and have deleted and rewritten a lot of this to try to bring at least some kind of coherent order to it (damn, I'd love to use AI to this end, but I'd like to keep my brain thanks)

So. Let's start here, of all the places I could start.

Spotify was already notorious for underfunding artists and running ICE ads (which were later removed) but the CEO Daniel Ek investment over $1 billion in Helsing, a European company specializing in AI for defense and autonomous weapon systems, caused many artists to remove their work from the platform and me to personally move to Tidal. I'm under no illusions that my move will do anything to stop war - that's a stretch, and as if a billion dollars goes far anyway - but it feels right to do so. It's hard not to roll my eyes and worse at friends and family who 'can't be bothered' moving (like it's hard) and aren't prepared to get used to a new system that might not be as algorithmically clever as Spotify yet.

Personal convenience often trumps morality.

Ah, capitalism.

Then there's Chat GPT, which I've deleted because Open AI is integrating it into the Department of War's Gen AI.mil, a platform accessible to 3 million military users and which aims to accelerate AI use in warfighting, intelligence and enterprise operations. Whilst it says it's not going to use it for surveillance of US citizens, even I am not that naive to think it won't happen. The government is very good at coercing companies - and countries - to meet their demands, after all, and to make up their own laws around what's necessary and right.

I am glad I'm not the only one who's moved to Anthropic, who had the balls to say nope, we're not going agree to the terms of a government who might use it for domestic surveillance and military, particularly lethal autonomous weopons. If Anthropic hand their tech to the military, the military can decide what necessary use is and how it's used, and Anthropic will have no say over it. Look at how the US is constantly flexing and bending the rules of war for it's own purpose - bomb a school first, apologise later. It doesn't seem to matter what guardrails are put in place. I don't want to get into all the finer details - there's plenty of that online if you choose to research yourself. The bottom line is that this company wasn't comfortable and said so - and were booted out because of it it was put about they were a risk, which has led to them suing the US government..

To be fair, I don't even trust Anthropic. It's happy to work with the government for military purposes to some (large) extent. Arguably, perhaps we should all be boycotting AI for it's potential to irrevocably change humanity, quite probably for the worst. But that's for another debate. Rest assured, your funny AI cat videos are linked to a far more nefarious use case.

It really got me thinking of how there is always another way, and companies - and governments - who say, yep, we know we have a contract but we aren't bending for the will of something or someone we really feel is going down the wrong path - such as wilfully ignoring guardrails that are there for a reason - should be celebrated and encouraged. Weak companies, weak people, weak governments - they'll topple humanity under the guise of strength and power. It's why so many of us admire Pedro Sánchez for pushing back against the US. You might not appreciate his socialist politics but it's a better alternative to barbarism, and you have to admire his willingness to call out what we're all seeing it's really about:

“It is unacceptable that those leaders who cannot fulfill this duty use the smoke of war to hide their failures and at the same time enrich a few.” – Pedro Sánchez

I find it hard to accept that most of us don't operate like this - we think about enriching ourselves instead of the greater good. And it's why so many of us are viscerally revolted by Trump, an old man desperately trying to prove his might and maintain popularity through his posturing, and don't even get me started on that cunt in Israel (which is actually far too pretty a word for him, but you get it)

I can't help feel that ultimately, whilst socialism may have had a bad rap in the past, it's clearly the only way we don't destroy ourselves. Rosa Luxemborg postulated that if we don't transition to a more socialist system we face chaos, war and environmental destruction, a direct result of capitalism that has caused fascism, environmental catatrophe, inquality. People do need to stand up, or we'll just be reorganising out of the ashes of our destruction by the very forces we support through complacency, fear and lack of imagination.

Yep, I'm naive - let me know in the comments, if you like. My head is all fuzzy with it. Geopolitics are insanely complicated and I confess I know nothing, but like I had to start somewhere with this rant, we all have to start somewhere, however small.

It reminds me of that meme where a gardener plants a tomato whilst the world is on fire behind him. Hopeful, naive, ineffectual - but something. It keeps us sane at least, this wild hope, this naive action we think might help. I always think a better way exists, it's just whether we are willing to stand up for it and where we make a start - and whether we can all galvanise to do so, and what form that takes.