The biggest threat from artificial intelligence is the sense that we have no say in it, writes Peter Lewis, who argues that resistance to the technology is rising in Australia and around the world.
Inevitability doctrine and democratic backlash
Lewis, non-executive chair of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company, writes that one of the most powerful drivers of the populist wave is the sense of inevitability surrounding the march of progress. Presenting the future as a fait accompli, he argues, poisons the civic well by dealing people out of the game.
While the US clings to its status as the oldest constitutional democracy, the alliance between tech leaders and the White House is creating its own AI reality untethered to the will of the people, he writes. On the velocity and trajectory of the technology, President Donald Trump and tech executives have determined that the accelerator must be hit and guardrails dispensed with to win an ill-defined race to build a god in a box.
Australia's strategy and its risks
In Australia, the government has determined that the only way to exercise control in a world of chaos is to grab on to this juggernaut. Lewis writes that Australia becomes to US tech data what the Saudis are to oil, using renewables to power massive centres in the desert, converting solar into AI tokens and piping them up to Asia as a new export industry.
Within the inevitability doctrine this strategy has logic, he writes, with the alternative being to become a client state to Silicon Valley. However, he warns that in pursuing this vision, Australians risk being blinded to the foreseeable consequences, including an industry that derives value by replacing workers, built on stolen work of creators, causing harms in theatres of war, with an insatiable thirst for energy and water, and a not insignificant chance it will destroy humanity.
Signs of resistance in Australia
Lewis points to recent events suggesting something similar to the US backlash is starting in Australia. He notes that Australians, despite high take-up of some AI tools, remain among the world's most sceptical and have a low tolerance for tech overlords. GetUp's successful campaign against Coles' partnership with Palantir, the data company that licenses software to the US military and immigration officials, shows the vulnerability of public brands that lean in too close to the beast.
Creators whose work has been stolen to train models that diminish the value of their future careers are standing their ground, demanding compensation and an ongoing model to give them control over the terms of use. Lewis also highlights the failure of the Firmus IPO, which was to have been the biggest Australian float since Telstra, following the withdrawal of a datacentre in Sydney, the first major project to fall over due to local community pressure.
Consumers, creators and communities are all challenging the inevitability storyline, Lewis writes, adding up to a series of counter-punches suggesting democratic faculties have not yet been fully exhausted. However, he warns the inevitability doctrine is durable and pushback will need to be ongoing, as these companies have the resources, influence and bald self-interest to pursue their objectives with the commitment of an AI agent gone rogue.
The biggest danger to democracy, Lewis concludes, is not the cynical misuse of unregulated deployment, but the broader sense that people have no say in what is happening to them. He notes upcoming fights in parliament over privacy reform, a digital duty of care, standards on datacentres and rules on government use of the technology, as well as struggles in workplaces over usage, surveillance and displacement, and negotiations in schools and social circles on how to use the bots and agents.
Lewis acknowledges it is exhausting and overwhelming, and that tech leaders and their paid sock puppets are banking on people running out of steam. But he argues the resistance many feel is real, and so long as democracy remains, it will be at the ballot box where people will have the opportunity to demand leaders challenge the sense of the inevitable. Inevitability is also a choice, he writes.
