Why Ludd?

The Luddites were right. They are known now as fools who hated technology, but they were actually skilled professionals who saw how new technology that should have been making people's lives better was being abused by the rich in a way that actually made things worse for everyone.The Luddites fought back, using collective power to demand a better deal for the people. They were a precursor to early trade unions who won safer work, an end to child labour, the 8 hour day and weekend - all things that were called foolish and radical by the bosses of the time.The strength of those early wins was in the grass roots power, something we must build again against the enormous push for AI and Data centers from the billionaires.AI data centers have enormous environmental impacts above and beyond traditional data centers. For example, a single data center proposed for Mascot is expected to use more water than all residents of Mascot, and 6 times as much electricity. After construction, there won't even be many long term jobs - these things are designed to mostly just run themselves. Nothing "trickles down".Sci-fi and tech bros suggest the biggest risk of AI is that of a superintelligent singularity that will seize power to start wars or make us live in an oppressive state, but the truth is more boring and more urgent: AI is just a brute force tool, it isn't sentient and may never be, but the ruling class is already using it for endless wars and surveillance and want to massively expand.Palantir and Flock are used to spy on the working class, "Where's Daddy" is a program used to track drone strike targets to their family homes, and the so far unprofitable and ineffective "productivity" applications ultimately aim to "create value" by destroying good paying skilled jobs to replace with a fractured low paid gig economy workforce.Even AI's most well known applications, language models and art creation, are useful only for replacing quality information, writing and art with lowest common denominator slop made from the stolen mashed up and rehydrated work of others. Schools and Universities are noticing drastically reduced average quality of work turned in, and are having to lower standards as a result because people are letting machines think for them so never learn how to do it themselves. ChatGPT is the lead paint of our generation.There are some limited useful applications of AI such as in science and medicine, but there are also issues here with AI being forced where inappropriate to try to cut jobs and boost profits at the expense of providing quality care. The underlying issue remains the same as that in the day of the original Ludds - technology being pushed recklessly to increase profits, rather than being implemented thoughtfully to actually benefit society.Billionaires and Politicians understand that communities are catching onto this, and make false claims of "sustainable implementations" and "community benefits", but this is smoke and mirrors. Data Centers are still being built to operate on fossil fuels (sometimes with questionable "offsets" of "power purchase agreements" as misleading greenwashing).We need to fight these things. People already are, and there have been wins in Lane Cove and Katoomba, already. The first of many wins to come, with your help. So take a stand and get involved, after all this city is your home - let's fight for it!