Hello (and, if you're joining us as we start a new book, welcome!).

This week we're beginning Why We Fear AI by Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer.

This week I'm reading two pieces and listening to a podcast episode:

• Why We Fear AI, Introduction
• "AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum" by Dan McQuillan (if you joined us for the conversation with Dan, you may remember it was the paper he linked to in the chat)
• Close All Tabs podcast episode on "How the AI Data Center Boom Impacts Black Communities" by Morgan Sung, Maya Cueva, Chris Egusa, and Chris Hambrick

(If you haven't ordered Why We Fear AI, please place an order as soon as possible - you can order it here as an ebook or physical copy.)

If you want a look at what my schedule, that's at the end of this email.

local things

There's a couple of local things that you might be interested in if you're in Michigan. If you're involved in any of the local organizing, you might already be hearing about some of these events (and more), but if not, you should reach out and I can get you connected to some of the other organizing spokes :)

Wayne State University symposium on AI

You should consider submitting a proposal to a symposium at Wayne State University. They're looking for researched presentations or art.

You can read more about the Wayne State University symposium, and the call for proposals, here; they want submissions by March 15 at 11:59p, and they say they'll try to respond to proposals by March 25. The symposium will take place April 10. Hope to see you there!

electing a new University of Michigan regent

If you're in Michigan, there's an opportunity this year to unseat Jordan Acker, one of the university regents rubber stamping the UM-LANL datacenter project; and elect Amir Makled, an attorney who has represented student protestors prosecuted by the University of Michigan and been vocal against the datacenter:

"The University will really thumb their nose in the air, at workers, at labor, at organizing, at trying to have facilities or pay parity against three campuses or just living wages for workers on campus," Makled said. "But (they) are willing to put up millions and hundreds of millions of dollars for data centers that are going to function as a tool for an industrial military complex."

If you don't need to hear any more than that, you can sign up here; for more info, read on:

There are several steps to it, but the gist is that we need to advance a candidate during the Democratic Spring Convention, and in order to advance that candidate, people must have been members of the Democratic party for at least 30 days. Since the convention is April 19, you must sign up as a member of the Democratic party by March 19 (or earlier) to be eligible to vote in the convention.

You can sign up here to get registered and connected to people. Please keep in mind that you'll need to attend the statewide party convention in Detroit. If you need a ride or help getting there, there are survey questions on the google form where you can indicate you need (or can offer) help doing so.

If you need a ride to Detroit, accommodations once you're there, childcare, or anything else to vote at the convention, people are organizing to make that all available, so please reach out if you need anything at all.

This part might be very important: If you live outside of Southeast Michigan, your vote might be especially consequential because of how votes are counted in the democratic state convention. It's a bit like the Electoral College at the national level, and as such it would be crucial to get you to the state convention if you're from SW Michigan or the UP, because your vote could determine the direction of your entire voting district.

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(okay, let's get back to it)

routine stuff

If you've read these emails before, this is mostly the same stuff as last week (except for the discount code at the end). You can probably skip it if you're caught up.

format

As a reminder, there are numerous ways to keep up with the reading group:

• newsletter: I send updates on Mondays and Thursdays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Thursday updates, I'll send an icebreaker question to think about, and a reminder of where & how to join the video chat later that day.
• video chats: Thursdays at 8pm ET we have a video chat on jitsi¹ where we talk about that week's readings. Sometimes we'll have a guest to talk about something related to what we read that week.
• group chat: if you want to chat with people on signal, we have a pretty active group chat. You can join the signal group chat here.

schedule

Here's my tentative schedule for the book. I'm not including the additional readings, but I'm thinking about ways to archive what we read each week - it just doesn't fit well in a table sent via email. If you have suggestions (the signal chat has recommended Zotero - if you have thoughts; please join the signal chat and let us know.)

next book(s)

After Why We Fear AI, we'll read Disabling Intelligences by Rua Williams. If you go to the link to order the book, I've been advised that the discount code PALAUT will give you a 20% discount on the book. Please order the book at your earliest convenience!

I'm also thinking about what our book after Disabling Intelligences will be; if you have suggestions, please feel free to reach out and make a suggestion!

last thoughts

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc... please feel free to reach out. Talk soon.

Also, if you come across something you think we'd like to read, I'd love to hear about it; contact me.

Okay, that's it; see you Thursday to discuss the chapter and other reading.