In this talk, Denise Utochkin zooms out of ChatGPT and takes a look at 'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) as a sociotechnical system and political project dating back 70 years.
Denise presents an analysis of 'AI' as an articulation of capitalist, white supremacist, and state violence and demonstrates that many negative side-effects of this set of technologies are not a bug, but a feature. Among them its growing contribution to the climate collapse, its reliance on blood minerals and devalued, traumatizing labour, its gleeful adoption by authoritarian regimes and greedy corporations.
Based on this analysis, Denise argues that as climate activists, we have an imperative to oppose, resist, and refuse 'AI' and that doing so may open up new possibilities for mitigating the worst excesses of the ongoing climate breakdown.
Video recorded 4 June 2025 for Scientist Rebellion Denmark at Greenpeace premises, Njalsgade, Copenhagen. Video recorded and edited by Henning Husum.
#4:
Similar to photo in article: Denmark’s first AI supercomputer is now operational. (2024-10-23). Novo Nordisk Foundation. https://novonordiskfonden.dk/en/news/denmarks-first-ai-supercomputer-is-now-operational/ (Accessed 2025-06-08).
#5:
Image at top of: Crawford, K., & Joler, V. (2018-09-07). Anatomy of an AI System—The Amazon Echo As An Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and Planetary Resources. Anatomy of an AI System. anatomyof.ai/ (Accessed 2025-06-08).
#7:
al Hammada, R. (2024). „If I Had Another Job, I Would Not Accept Data Annotation Tasks„: How Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Train AI. In: M. Miceli, A. Dinika, K. Kauffman, C. Salim Wagner, & L. Sachenbacher (eds.), The Data Workers‘ Inquiry. data-workers.org/roukaya/. (Accessed 2025-06-09). With CC BY 4.0. license
#9:
Guerra-Pujol, F. E. (2017-11-21). A Bayesian approach to the trolley problem? (Mini-thought experiment). Prior Probability. https://priorprobability.com/2017/11/21/a-bayesian-approach-to-the-trolley-problem-mini-thought-experiment/ (Accessed 2025-06-08). With CC BY-NC 3.0 license
#19:
Data centre power consumption graph from The Big Take. (2024-06-21). AI Is Already Wreaking Havoc on Global Power Systems. Blomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-data-centers-power-grids/ (Accessed 2025-06-09).
#21:
Image is from the report mentioned in footnote[1]. It has CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
#31:
The two images can be found in Kirkebæk-Johansson, L. (2025-04-11). Israelsk militær og Det Hvide Hus hopper med på kontroversiel AI-trend. DR. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/kultur/israelsk-militaer-og-det-hvide-hus-hopper-med-paa-kontroversiel-ai-trend (Accessed 2025-06-09).
#32:
Figure from Wenger, E. (2024). AI produces gibberish when trained on too much AI-generated data. Nature, 631(8022), 742–743. www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02355-z
#39:
Degrowth drawing originates from https://degrowth.info/es/blog/how-to-participate-in-global-degrowth-day . With CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
#44:
Figure from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_pudding_model. With CC BY 4.0. license