Season 2 · Episode 7

Empire - Karen Hao

Josh and Ray learn about AI as an imperial technology from Karen Hao

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Episodes

Season 2 — Still AI?

Episode 1

Still AI?

Josh and Ray are back to talk about... AI again?

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Much to their chagrin, Josh and Ray discover that Season 1 of Politechs wasn't sufficient to destroy AI. They conclude that the only thing to do is assemble a Luddite army and launch a new assault on HELLISH AI. Welcome to Season 2 of Politechs!

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. Tu Nube Seca Mi Río - Spanish organisation opposing datacentres
  2. AI Killed My Job, by Brian Merchant
  3. Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK]
  4. I Am An AI Hater, by Anothony Moser
  5. The Kirby Frame, by Anthony Moser
  6. Against AI, by Foz Meadows
  7. A Butlerian Hauntology, by Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali
  8. Tech Won't Save Us - a critical tech podcast

Episode 2

Hate - Anthony Moser

Josh and Ray hate on AI with world-renowned AI hater Anthony Moser.

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Josh and Ray sit down with Anthony Moser and discuss the impetus for him to write "I Am An AI Hater". We talk about the role of politeness in maintaining the status quo, Anthony's views on copyright as a musician, the importance of collective action, how the law is not a source of power but rather an expression of power, and lots more.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 3

Datacentres - Aurora Gómez Delgado

Josh and Ray discuss datacentres in the age of AI with Aurora Gómez Delgado.

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Datacentres might seem boring, but Aurora Gómez Delgado of Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, a Spanish organisation working to combat the ecosocial impact of datacentres, would like you to sit up and take notice of the resources they are stealing from the people who live in the surrounding region. Aurora educates us on the increase in number and size of datacentres, accelerated even further by the AI project, and the corresponding impact on water and power usage, and what that means for farmers trying to grow their crops, people trying to pay their electricity bills, and the availability of clean drinking water.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 4

Writers - Foz Meadows

Josh and Ray talk to science fiction and fantasy writer Foz Meadows.

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Foz Meadows joins us to discuss his "Against AI" polemic, written in response to Erin Underwood's open letter to SFWA and the SFF community in the wake of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's announcement that works written by LLM tools and works for which LLM tools were used at any point in the writing process would not be eligible for consideration. The conversation touches on not only Foz's piece, but also the sheer stupidity of thinking we can outsource the act of thinking to machines that do not think, what the introduction of LLMs is doing to education, and the role that writers—especially science fiction and fantasy writers—have to play in resisting the inevitability narrative.

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. Against AI - Foz's response to Erin Underwood's open letter to SFWA and the SFF community [permalink]
  2. Nebula Awards Rules - section 9.11 deals with LLM tools [permalink]
  3. Open Letter to the Science Fiction Writers Association and Community - by Erin Underwood [permalink]
  4. xkcd: Duty Calls - someone is wrong on the internet
  5. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. - case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than for the benefit of his employees or customers
  6. No Take, Only Throw - a webcomic strip in which a dog wants to play fetch with its owner [permalink]

Episode 5

Sci-fi - Syed Mustafa Ali

Noted fugitive decolonial Luddite scholar Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali explores the Butlerian Jihad, both in the Duniverse and our universe.

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Josh and Ray sit down with Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali, author of a recent paper entitled "A Butlerian Hauntology" to unpack the dense payload of insight contained within the paper. Dr. Ali grabs threads from Dune, critical race theory and world-systems theory, political economy, political ecology, and political theology, actually existing fascism, computer science, classic Luddism, literature, film and television, labour power, and anticolonial jihad and masterfully weaves them together in a critical computing tapestry of extraordinary beauty. Gaze upon it, ye tech bros, and despair!

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. Imaginary Futures from Thinking Machines to the Global Village - book by Richard Barbrook [permalink]
  2. Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao
  3. Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema - book edited by Ziauddin Sardar and Sean Cubitt [permalink]
  4. A Cyborg Manifesto - essay by Donna Haraway [permalink]
  5. Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity - paper by Drew McDermott
See the transcript footnotes for more!

Episode 6

Democracy - Anna Colom

Josh and Ray talk democracy with Dr. Anna Colom.

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We welcome our favourite political scientist, Dr. Anna Colom, back on the show to dive into democracy: what is it really, how does AI threaten it, and how can it be built for real? Anna is a researcher with The Data Tank, a "think and do tank"; they work with people, organisations and institutions around the world to unlock data's potential: gathering, accessing, and reusing it responsibly, so we’re all better equipped to tackle the pressing issues of our time.

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. The Sciences of the Democracies - book by Jean-Paul Gagnon and Benjamin Abrams [permalink]
  2. The Tech Coup - book by Marietje Schaake [permalink]
  3. Polis - an open-source platform that helps entire cities, states, or even countries find common ground on complex issues [permalink]

Episode 7

Empire - Karen Hao

Josh and Ray learn about AI as an imperial technology from Karen Hao

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Tech journalist Karen Hao joins us to discuss her book, "Empire of AI". Karen explains why she believes that the Silicon Valley hyper-scaled LLM flavour of AI is an imperial technology, and has become even more explicitly imperial in the 12 months since the book first came out as it is being more and more incorporated in the US military's wars. The paperback edition of the book has just been released in the US and UK, so if you live in either of those places and haven't read the book yet, be sure to pick it up!

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao
  2. Empire of AI - UK paperback
  3. Empire of AI - US paperback
  4. Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
  5. Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI - article by Karen Hao [permalink]
See the transcript footnotes for more!

Season 1 — AI

Trailer

Trailer

A podcast exploring the inherent political nature of technology. Season 1: AI.

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Since the invention of the wheel, automation has both substituted and complemented labour; machines replaced humans at some lower-paying jobs, but this was compensated by the creation of new, higher-paying jobs; in other words: tech workers. In recent years, there has been a desire from certain high-profile tech companies for an "apolitical workplace". This in itself is a political act; an act designed to suppress the power of tech workers and reinforce the status quo. They know that politics is inextricable from tech. And now so do you. Welcome to Politechs.

In Season 1 of Politechs, it's time to talk about AI: what it is, what it can and can't do, what makes it dangerous, and why we as tech workers must not buy into the inevitability narrative; why we must resist, and how we can resist.

Episode 1

AI

Josh and Ray discuss why they need to discuss AI, and then proceed to discuss AI.

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AI is everywhere these days, and the problem with it is not what people think. It's not Skynet we should fear; it's the actually existing harms that are being done to the environment, workers around the world, and the human mind itself. Join Josh and Ray for the inaugural episode of the inaugural season of Politechs as they lay down a Luddite argument against AI from the perspective of software engineers and talk about how to have good faith discussions with people who might not see or be willing to acknowledge the dangers of the technologies under the AI umbrella.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 2

Trust

Josh and Ray ask and answer the question of why society has such an unwavering trust in technology.

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Our societies are necessarily based on trust, but how do we decide what institutions, people, and technologies to place our trust in? And why have we collectively decided that since "computers don't make mistakes", they are always worthy of our trust?

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 3

Narratives and Narrators

Josh and Ray lay out some of the narratives driving the AI hype and look at the narrators behind those narratives.

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Whilst everyone has an opinion about AI, there are certain top-level narratives driving the hype bubble. We look at the doomer / booster divide (which turns out to be not so divided) and peek behind the curtain to see which corporations and people are pushing these narratives and what they have to gain.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 4

Surveillance

Josh, Ray, and Dr. Chris Gilliard talk about surveillance.

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We're joined this week by Dr. Chris Gilliard, Co-Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute to talk about what generative AI means for surveillance, and how this technology disproportionately harms marginalised groups. Dr. Gilliard is a writer, professor, and speaker whose scholarship examines digital privacy, surveillance, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. His book "Luxury Surveillance" is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2026.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 5

Inevitability

Despite what the powerful people pushing AI say, this future is not inevitable.

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To quote Sarah Connor, "There is no fate", so why do so many people buy into the narrative that AI is inevitable so we might as well get on board (or throw up our hands in despair)? Josh and Ray get to the bottom of this, realise that Skynet might happen after all, and channel the great Lina Khan: "Where we are is not just the inevitable outcome of market forces or technological development. It's a result of choices we've made, and policies we've enacted or not enacted. And we can change that. We can. We must."

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 6

Programmers

Josh and Ray talk about how to talk to programmers about AI.

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When you're trying to convince somebody of something (for example, to examine whether AI is a good thing), you need to know your audience. This episode is all about looking at programmers as a whole and identifying different groups, then thinking through how to talk to members of those groups and use arguments that resonate with them.

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 7

Automation

Josh and Ray define automation and look at how it has evolved from basic tools to factories to knowledge work.

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Automation is usually presented to us as an unalloyed good, a way to remove tedium from our lives so we can spend our time on the things that truely matter. But is this really the case? In this episode, we take a closer look at automation: what it is, who wants it, and the harm it wreaks on the environment and society.

Episode 8

Resistance

Special guest Brian Merchant joins Josh and Ray to bring Season 1 to a close by talking about resisting AI.

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We've talked about a lot on Politechs this season, and now it's time to pull it all together and think about how we can resist AI. And who better to talk to about resistance than Brian Merchant, author of "Blood in the Machine", a fascinating book about the original Luddites, a group of tech workers in early 19th century England who took up the hammer and smashed the machines that were being used to emiserate them. We talk about the parallels between the time of the Luddites and our current moment, how capital and the state teamed up to crush the Luddites, and how we can avoid their fate.

Mentioned in this episode:

Bonus Episode

Risks

Josh and Ray are joined by Anna Colom to discuss the risks of AI.

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Josh and Ray talk about the real risks of AI with Anna Colom, a social science researcher working at the intersection of democratic processes and digital technologies. We are going through unprecedented times in the pace and scale of technological development driven by data and AI systems. Yet, these developments and their applications are being led and decided by a few in a regulatory vacuum, supported by narratives driven by hype and power asymmetries. There is however a large and more diverse community of technology developers across the globe who can claim back the authority if it refuses to be blinded by hype; if it questions decisions made by a few; if it favours evidence and ethics over magic; and if it works collaborative with the rest of society to answer some of the most pressing questions of out times on how data and AI can be responsibly used to help people make this world a better place.

Mentioned in this episode: