Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Politico that “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” referring to ChatGPT users dying, people losing their jobs to AI, and the other negative externalities we have seen from AI.
asserted
we → tell → AI
Altman wasn’t running for office Tuesday.
asserted
Altman → run → office
But this worldview—that the masses must shut up and suffer while oligarchs centralize power, self-deal, spend wildly to capture the political process, and automate away human endeavors so they can amass yet more wealth—was wholly repudiated in Tuesday’s election as people in Red States, Blue States, and Purple States rejected the cruelty, corruption, and depravity economy we’ve seen over the last few years.
asserted
we → shut → years
The main difference between Donald Trump’s administration this term and his first term is that Silicon Valley’s oligarchs have lined up to kiss the ring; look no further than the photos from his inauguration and his gilded gala with China’s President Xi Jinping earlier this fall.
asserted
oligarchs → line → Jinping
Every major tech company CEO has spent the last two years flattering Trump, giving him gifts, and trying to capture the political process.
asserted
CEO → spend → process
They have been generously rewarded for their fealty and their money as the Trump administration has spent the last two years letting Big Tech do whatever it wants.
asserted
it → reward → whatever
Elon Musk was given the keys to the federal government and used them to slash critical government programs, lay off tens of thousands of public servants, and replace collective human expertise with teenaged idiots and AI algorithms.
asserted
Musk → give → idiots
His companies have continued to rake in billions in government contracts, his busted AI has been integrated into critical government systems, and the cuts led by his “Department of Government Efficiency” has, conservatively, killed many thousands of people around the world.
asserted
cuts → continue → world
Trump has pardoned crypto criminals, his family has made billions of dollars in cryptocurrency scams, and has overseen the rise of a gambling and prediction market-based “economy” rife with insider trading and misery (the idea of the administration doing anything to crack down on this is so implausible that to even suggest it could happen is laughable).
uncertain
it → pardon → this
He has installed manosphere podcasters, X trolls, and conspiracy theorists into top administration roles; they have performed even worse than their already low expectations.
asserted
they → instal → expectations
He has leveraged commercial surveillance companies to build a brutal, tech-powered mass deportation campaign.
asserted
He → leverage → campaign
His government’s communications strategy can be described in no other way than inscrutable AI slop shitposting.
asserted
strategy → describe → shitposting
This is to say nothing of the cost of living crisis Trump has caused as he’s started an illegal war in Iran that has driven up gas and diesel prices and levied tariffs on America’s allies for reasons that defy explanation.
asserted
that → say → explanation
This has driven up the price of everything even as Trump’s administration slashes regulations on fossil fuel companies and big corporations.
asserted
administration → drive → companies
The Trump administration has let Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella do whatever they want, even as their products drive mass anxiety, the destruction of the internet as we know it, and have caused corporations to bet that the future is widespread mass unemployment.
asserted
future → let → it
Trump has cheered on the construction of data centers even as his base of supporters have said they don’t want them in their communities.
asserted
they → cheer → communities
Trump has said American communities should “let data reign” and that if communities “want to be successful and rich” they should build more data centers.
asserted
they → say → centers
As a reward for letting Silicon Valley run the country, Elon Musk spent $474 million trying to help Republicans maintain the status quo; super PACs tied to the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries spent roughly $250 million to largely support Republicans and oppose Democrats, according to Molly White’s Tech Influence Watch project.
uncertain
PACs → let → project
A16z and people tied to it spent roughly $94.4 million trying to influence the election, according to White.
uncertain
A16z → tie → White
This is just a small sample of the ways that Silicon Valley attempted to put its thumbs on the scale of this election to prop up a deeply unpopular administration.
asserted
Valley → attempt → administration
And, in nearly every conceivable way, voters aggressively rejected Trump and Silicon Valley’s vision for America.
asserted
voters → reject → America
It turns out people do not want to accept “some bad things happening” to pad the valuations and pocketbooks of billionaires and trillionaires when the “bad things” include worsening wealth inequality, a housing and cost of living crisis, mass automation and unemployment, mass surveillance, cuts to government services, foreign wars, loud, polluting data centers that employ a few construction workers while they’re being built and no one after that are being used to increase profits for out-of-state corporations, and a culture war that infringes on the civil rights of immigrants and trans people.
asserted
that → turn → immigrants
Across the country, there were 40 ballot measures about AI data center projects; voters chose to restrict 39 of them.
asserted
voters → be → them
In Ohio—a state that has become extremely Red in recent cycles—Democrat Sherrod Brown cruised to a five-point win running on a campaign to rein in data centers.
asserted
Brown → become → centers
Vivek Ramaswamy, a Peter Thiel acolyte and billionaire venture capitalist was absolutely trounced by Amy Acton, a public health official who supports data center moratoriums and vaccines and presented herself to the state’s voters as being a normal person and not a deranged Twitter troll.
asserted
who → trounce → voters
In New York State, Governor Kathy Hochul won reelection after enacting the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers in July; her opponent Bruce Blakeman called the moratorium “crazy” and vowed to end it if he won.
asserted
he → win → it
In Texas, Musk spent $212 million trying to elect the wildly unpopular Ken Paxton (who, as an aside, once threatened to subpoena 404 Media’s reporting); in exchange for lighting this money on fire, Texas has, in James Talarico, its first Democratic Senator in nearly 40 years.
asserted
Texas → spend → years
Talarico began his campaign by saying “The people at the top — the Elon Musks, the Rupert Murdochs, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world — they spend so much time and energy keeping us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power.”
asserted
unity → begin → wealth
Musk barely tweeted Tuesday; once it became clear his preferred candidates had lost and that people do not want AI data centers, he finally suggested “data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” presumably because it’s clear people don’t want them here on Earth.
uncertain
people → tweet → Earth
Jason Calacanis, the intolerable venture capitalist and host of the unlistenable All In podcast tweeted a bunch of prediction market screenshots of the Talarico race and said he “never expected Texas to turn blue.
asserted
Texas → tweet → race
Ugh, I moved here to get away from the left lunacy!”
asserted
I → move → lunacy
"Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said recently.
asserted
Cortez → want → humanity
Silicon Valley spent wildly on the election and Republicans have spent much of the last decade trying to press structural advantages to gerrymander districts, suppress the vote, and sow doubt on our elections.
asserted
Republicans → spend → elections
The sheer anger voters feel was enough to overwhelm these efforts Tuesday, nearly without exception (the one main outlier: A billionaire wealth tax ballot measure in California looks likely to fail after billionaires spent $379 million lobbying to kill it, outspending the opposition 250-to-1, with many billionaires threatening to move their companies and themselves out of the state).
asserted
billionaires → feel → state
Given this, it should not be taken for granted that elections can or will always go this way, and Democrats need to show that they are not scared of governing.
asserted
they → give → governing
Up and down the ballot, in all states, voters were generally given the choice between largely normal people trying to fight for the working class and sycophantic cartoon supervillains, nepo picks, fumbling buffoons, and Twitter trolls seeking to enable the regime and Big Tech’s vision of the future, where AI CEOs become trillionaires and everyone else loses their job to a robot and breathes methane gas from the data centers in their backyards.
asserted
everyone → give → backyards
It turns out that from Michigan to Mississippi (yes, Mississippi), people are done accepting “bad things happening” for the benefits of the richest people in the world.
asserted
people → turn → world
There is a vision of the world focused on improving the wellbeing of average people and there is a vision of the world that focused on making a few dozen people in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. even richer and more powerful.
asserted
people → be → Valley
Newly-elected Texas Democratic Gov (!?!?) Gina Hinojosa recently made this clear to the New York Times, which still doesn’t get it.
asserted
which → elect → it
Hinosa crushed three-term incumbent governor Greg Abbott by running as an “economic populist,” a label the media has wrongly given to Trump and MAGA because they villainize immigrants and trans people but govern like oligarchs.
asserted
they → crush → oligarchs
…and 3 more, not listed.
The Aporia
