The AI revolution in Scotland is a product of Brexit ... where normal planning rules, environmental standards, and democratic accountability magically disappear.
Any technology for which the benefits are vague, untouchable and over-hyped and the downsides are huge, visible and clandestine is in deep trouble.
If much of the AI experience feels like a high-speed hallucination in an already deeply disorienting world, it may become a focal point for a culmination of disaffection. AI is fast becoming the lightning rod for decades of immiseration, anger at tech-elites and deep-seated hatred for the world we’ve been forced to inhabit. In this sense, the overwhelming power and wealth of the Tech Class is a mirror of the illusion that AI can create enough ‘growth’ to solve social crisis, or the fantasy that you can create massive power surges in a climate crisis.
As Ewan Morrison writes: “We have more power than we realise. We are not just protesting a technology we dislike. We are standing across multiple political divides, against a financial scam that threatens all our livelihoods. The good news is that we don’t need to bring down the whole edifice at once. We just need to keep saying no. What’s needed isn’t heroism, it’s just turning up at council planning permission meetings armed with facts. We only need to stop them, again and again, location after location, until the clock runs out. Keep blocking. Keep organising. Until the thing collapses under the weight of its own impossibility.”