Hey there. In 3 hours at 6pm GMT, we're going to get together and wrap up our discussions about Techno-Negative by Thomas Dekeyser ... with Thomas Dekeyser.

I remember skimming the conclusions 6 or 7 weeks ago, still confused by the ideas of ontological policing and struggle, thinking "well, I hope that makes more sense later". Now that I'm on the other side of this, I feel like I have a clearer idea what this means, and a sense of urgency about dealing with the problem with an over-investment in humanism in techno-negativity, but I'm really curious to hear how these ideas landed with all of you, and whether I missed the call Dekeyser was making of us.

I've expressed anxiety in the past about the durability of reasons people hate AI (either in individual cases - like looking at an AI-generated image or AI-generated text; or in the abstract - like the overarching political and ideological project of AI), and wanting to make sure that the reasons for being a hater are resilient to the petty advances engineers make from year to year. If the only reason you don't like AI-generated images of people is that you see 6 fingers on each hand, or 2 left feet, then it may be frustrating to hear that well-paid engineers are dutifully working that problem as we speak. In fact, from what I've seen, a lot of AI image generators seem to mostly catch the kinds of anatomical issues that were so prevalent just a few years ago.

This observation (about image generators making humans that aren't human) isn't the point Dekeyser is making in this book, but I found myself relating a lot to his anxieties about the durability of precisely where our hate comes from, or what motivates it, to ensure that we don't get lost in our collective techno-negative project. There's a similar kind of problem in what motivates our rejection of technology - namely, this troubling pattern we resort to ontological policing of what qualifies as human (and thus what doesn't), and deploy violence against whatever is on the other side of that boundary we construct. If we're going to build a robust movement of techno-negativity, I think Dekeyser is calling for us to finally break this tradition of policing and violence, and embark on a project of abolitionism that rejects humanism - without resorting to brutal inhumanity (to allude back to page 160).

I'm really excited to hear how Dekeyser got on this track, what characters on the landscape of the AI discourse he's been able to make sense of (or that have frustrated him) since figuring out and writing about all this, and what advice he may have to offer us thinking, writing, talking, and organizing in the midst of - hands waiving all this around us.

There are a couple of ideas that I really feel like I want to spend more time thinking (and talking with all of you!) about - the ideas of in/un/non/counterhumanisms (page 162) and the thoughts on the present (and past, and future) that I think came up briefly in the last chapter, and also came up here in pages 162/163. I feel like I only gingerly really understand what Dekeyser is saying with some of these ideas, and I don't know if I could confidently explain them to someone who's confused or can't draw the distinctions between some of these ideas. If you've got thoughts, I would love to hear them today when we chat.

When you're ready to join at 6p GMT (or 2p ET), you can click on this link or you can go here:

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

See you then.