The AI Update XII: AI Fascism

In this week's AI Update, Scott and Jhave discuss some of the ways in which fascism reproduces itself, how AI could be used as a tool to facilitate it, and how those leading AI development have found themselves in positions of political power.

References:

Ahmed, S. (2024). Social Media News Use Amplifies the Illusory Truth Effects of Viral Deepfakes: A Cross-National Study of Eight Countries. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2024.2410783

Anna's Archive & Library Genesis. https://annas-archive.org/ , https://libgen.is/

Bain, N., & Bartolo, D. (2025). Emergence of collective oscillations in massive human crowds.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388724182_Emergence_of_collective_oscillations_in_massive_human_crowds

Bletchley Declaration. (2023). Countries attending the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-safety-summit-2023-the-bletchley-declaration

Canetti, E. (1960). Crowds and Power https://archive.org/details/crowdspower0000cane

Furie, M. (2005). Pepe the Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog

Harrison, H. (1957). The Stainless Steel Rat. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/70034

Knausgaard, K. O. (2011). My Struggle: Book 6 https://archipelagobooks.org/book/my-struggle-book-six/

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.: https://archive.org/details/decolonisingmind0000ngug

Sutskever, I. (2023). Ilya: the AI scientist shaping the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iqn1HhFJ6c

Swartz, A. (2008). Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt

Watkins, G. (2025). AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism. https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/

This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.