The Age of Advanced Stupidity - Lecture
This lecture explores the history and current state of AI, debunking myths about its inevitability and benefits. It discusses the problematic ideologies driving AI development, its environmental impact, and the negative effects on labour and cognitive functions. I argue that AI is not a predetermined technology but one that can be shaped by societal choices and activism.
Tesla's flying car unveiled on October 17 2026 (CNN, 2026)
AI is...
AI is a complex set of technologies that need to be understood within the context they are used in.
The most common usage for AI are chatbots or personalised agents. The more popular ones are ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity and Grok.
Chatbots were unleashed onto the global public on November 30, 2022 without any regulatory oversight, no protective guide rails, no literacy nor understanding of their use and no care for the consequences of their use.
The company's at the helm of the AI revolution or Frontier technologies as they are often referred to, are led by men with a keen sense of self-importance. They harbour strange ideas bordering on and or leaning into misogyny, white supremacy, eugenics, and fascism. Why they are trusted by governments worldwide tells us a great deal about the harms our elected representatives are prepared to accept, or over look. The evidence of malfeasance and careless corporate behaviour is evident in the appeals made by whistleblowers, investigative journalists and concerned policy makers.
Artificial intelligence systems entering the public domain are often inaccurate, designed to create sycophantic relationships with their users and are informed by the greatest theft of creative and intellectual knowledge in history.
Behind the hype surrounding artificial intelligence lies a corporate agenda of exploitation, environmental destruction and evasion of accountability.
This lecture, and the resources appended below, are essentially a guide to help inform and equip students of media ecology with the means to make informed decisions about AI and its rapid, some say purposefully and uncritically accelerated deployment into just about every facet of our lives. Far more important than what AI Chatbots do, is who they do it to and who they do it for.
Resources
Podcasts
Data Vampires - The Threat of Data Centres and AI, Tech Won't Save Us (4-part series)
Research papers
Bender, Emily M et al, ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?’ in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM, 2021) 610,
Gebru, Timnit and Émile P Torres, ‘The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence’ (2024) 29(4) First Monday
Books
Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and the Radicalization of a Tech Idealist, Timnit Gebru, Atria/One Signal Publishers, 16 February 2027, ISBN-10: 1668093073
Nerd Reich - Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, Gil Durán, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 18 August 2026, ISBN13: 9781668221402
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI, Carissa Véliz, Doubleday, 21 Apr 2026, ISBN 9780385550970
Techno Negative - A long history of refusing the machine, Thomas Dekeyser, University of Minnesota Press, 24 March 2026, ISBN-10: 1517917727
The AI Con - How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, Emily M Bender & Alex Hanna, JONATHAN CAPE & BH - TRADE, 20 May 2025, ISBN-10: 1847928625
The Empire of AI - Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination, Karen Hao, Allan Lane Penguin, 25 July 2025, ISBN-10: 0241678927
The Mechanic and The Luddite - A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, Jathan Sadowski, University of California Press, January 2025, ISBN 9780520398078
The Reverse Centaurs Guide to Life After AI, Cory Doctorow, Verso, 23 June 2016, ISBN 9780374621575
Films
Plug & Pray (2010)
Is man a machine made of flesh? PLUG & PRAY opens the door to the secret laboratories of artificial intelligence, diving into a world in which computer technology, robotics, biology, neuroscience and developmental psychology merge. Of all people, a pioneer of computer technology and the developer of the first chatbot "ELIZA," Joseph Weizenbaum, becomes the harshest critic of technological megalomania. Born in Berlin, Weizenbaum fled with his family to the U.S. in 1936 to escape the Nazis and made a career as Professor of Computer Science at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shortly before his death, he entered into his last duel with the creators of the robots that are to replace humans. PLUG & PRAY opens a highly topical dialogue between the euphoric AI researchers and the precocious computer pioneer on the question of what it actually means to be human.
Machine in Flames (2022)
Two film makers find a secret history of destruction by following the footsteps of a clandestine group of 1980s French computer workers.
References
Morton, R 2026, The Boast in the Machine, 5 October 2026, https://rick-morton.ghost.io/the-boast-in-the-machine/Links to an external site.
Weizenbaum. J 1966, ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine, Commun. ACM 9(1), 36–45 https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168
The Chatbot Inventor’s Cautionary Alert (1978), GBH Archives, https://youtu.be/GxSJQnWzJOs
Lee, B & Trott, S 2023, A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work, arsTechnica https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/07/a-jargon-free-explanation-of-how-ai-large-language-models-work/
Rundell, K 2026, I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom
McCarthy, Minsky et. al. 1955, A proposal for the dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.htmlLinks to an external site.
Uenuma, F 2026, Why the Computer Scientist Behind the World’s First Chatbot Dedicated His Life to Publicizing the Threat Posed by A.I., Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-the-computer-scientist-behind-the-worlds-first-chatbot-dedicated-his-life-to-publicizing-the-threat-posed-by-ai-180987971/
Gebru, T & Torres, Émile P 2024, The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence, First Monday, 29(4) https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v29i4.13636
Acemoglu, S & Hohnson, S, Power and Progress – Our 1000-year struggle over technology and prosperity, PublicAffairs, 16 May 2023, ISBN-10 1541702530
Hoa, K, Empire of AI – Inside the reckless race for total domination, Penguin Press, 14 April 2026, ISBN-10 1802064656
Joshi, K, Doomsday AI cultists aren’t just good marketers — they’re capturing governments, Crikey, 22 September 2026, https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/09/22/anthropic-openai-artificial-intelligence-data-centres-climate-change-jacob-coxon/
Doctorow, C 2026, LLMs are real, AI is fake, Pluralistic.net https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/
Kosmyna, N et.al, Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task, 10 June 2025, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872
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