Against AI and its world: blockades in the University of Rennes
Following the blocking of several conferences during “AI week” in Rennes, we are republishing the press release from the members of the Anti-Industrial Assembly published on their Facebook page. We are attaching our own press release below.
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Press release
03/09/24 — Against AI and its world: blockages in the University of Rennes
1) OUR ACTION AGAINST THEIR PROPAGANDA
On Tuesday, September 3, 2024, the Rennes members of the Anti-Industrial Assembly succeeded in exposing the criticism of artificial intelligence in broad daylight!
These are two “AI Week” conferences that have been cancelled and all the other conferences seriously disrupted.
In the morning, we completely blocked the Robert Castell Amphitheater (EHESP).
We then entered the conference space of the INRIA center, urgently requisitioned at the other end of Rennes, and prevented the speakers from unpacking without contradiction their highly biased discourse in favor of the development of AI (under the guise of criticism from the margin).
We then recreated the conditions for genuine democratic debate by hosting open meetings inside and outside. More than a hundred students, professors and even speakers were able to know and discuss at length the hidden face of AI: its unsustainable ecological and social costs as well as its structural impossibility to be regulated by anyone.
Faced with our determination to publicly denounce the dangers of AI, the organizers considerably strengthened the security of the afternoon conferences, transforming INRIA into a fortress before the army conference (closed doors, security patrols, complete disruption of the schedule and a mess of communication).
Transformed into a prison too, since the students and professionals, handpicked, were sequestered in the amphitheater for several hours, prevented even from taking a break to digest the DGA's brain jam for a killer military AI, certainly, but ethical! A very strange concept of “awareness-raising” that the TIARE project advocates with great pomp and circumstance.
Never mind! Despite this disproportionate device, we still managed to get as close as possible to the room and to express our frontal resistance, which is just beginning.
Now the defenders of this new anachronistic technology that is AI know that they will not be able to promote their toy with impunity, with consequences that are at best unknown, at worst disastrous. We are up against AI and tomorrow we will hunt it wherever it wants to be established.
2) WHY BLOCK RATHER THAN DEBATE?
From Monday 2 to Friday 6 September, a series of conferences on AI will take place at the University of Rennes. This is an opportunity for white collar workers to celebrate the SequoIA project (development of AI in surveillance, intelligent networks and autonomous robots) for which the government recently contributed 20 million euros, in order to ensure that Rennes is a major hub in Europe in artificial intelligence research.
While in 2021, in Libya, a Turkish drone attacks targets without it being possible to establish the existence of any human decision, most speakers call for orienting the debate towards societal responsibilities related to the uses of technologies based on AI. Isn't this chimera of AI control already too far removed from the reality we're already facing? Or a way of speaking loudly to cover up the noise of wars to come? Because in the meantime, when techno-genocides multiply, the Directorate-General of the Army (DGA) is also invited during this AI week, to promote its integration into the French armed forces.
In concrete terms, the actors are very far from reality: one of them promotes AI to predict diseases that are themselves produced by industrial infrastructure (on which AI depends to exist). Another says that AIs should be monitored to make sure they are ethical. But this surveillance itself requires artificial intelligence or click employees responsible for chain-filtering discriminatory texts, pornographic and violent images to allow the software to function better.
And obviously, none of them talk about the ecological cost (data centers consuming water and energy, extractivism, pollution etc.). No, they prefer to teach us how to make good artificial intelligence. It is not the use of AI that is to blame but the AI itself: there can be good and bad uses of AI, yet all of them assume the same energy-consuming and polluting production and connection infrastructure. How can we make us believe that living in a fair, sustainable and free world is compatible with the gigantism and ecological predation that artificial intelligence implies?
We don't want ultra-connected smart cities promoted at one of the conferences held by the company. Siradel which will make it possible to regulate the mobility flows of human livestock by dozens of sensors.
The group Lacroix, also present this week, is combining its expertise with STMicroelectronics to develop the Smart Detection pilot: it will be used to detect the sounds of mass movements to warn the authorities. Isn't this type of technology that has led China to “social control”?
For Orange, a telecommunications giant, AI will play a central role in monitoring our “suspicious” behavior on mobile networks, our banking services and even our electricity consumption! It seems that this company is getting rich from our data and our loss of autonomy.
So we are mobilizing this week to ensure that these conferences do not take place. In a context where the partiality of stakeholders in favor of the development of AI is well established, while the associated costs and risks are nevertheless obvious, we have therefore chosen to prevent empty debates, which in our opinion would otherwise simply serve to mask the noise of the smooth generalization of AI. A transparent popular debate is better than a conference full of conflicts of interest. So this week and thereafter, let's organize collectively to concretely resist this new technological development. Join the anti-industrial assembly in Rennes!
Rennes Anti-Industrial Assembly
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Press release: ATR — local group based in Rennes
on 05/09/24
Blockages against the “AI Week” in Rennes: it is urgent for scientists to stop their madness
In Rennes, since June 2024, researchers and industrialists (including Thales, an arms company, including Thales, an arms company, Airbus, an aviation company, and Orange, a telecommunications company), as well as the army (DGA), have continued to celebrate. In fact, without any democratic consultation, the government, through the ANR, has just granted them 20 million euros (directly from our taxes). 20 million donated for their “SequoIA” project (development of AI in particular in terms of surveillance, smart networks and autonomous robots).
In this context, the University of Rennes, proud of its association with such prestigious manufacturers in the fields of mass surveillance and ecological disaster, hastened to organize in our city a week to promote AI, from September 2 to 6. We could not let this happen without providing critical feedback to the public.
https://intelligence-artificielle.univ-rennes.fr/actualites/semaine-IA
This Tuesday, September 3, while speakers were planning to praise the governance of AI, the transition of AI, or even the development of military AIs (this in a context where Palestinian civilians are already being killed en masse by the AI Lavender: https://www.geo.fr/geopolitique/israel-gaza-lavender-effrayante-intelligence-artificielle-israelienne-qui-a-marque-37000-cibles-humaines-hamas-maisons-morts-bombes-219593), we therefore came to support the activists of the anti-industrial assembly in Rennes, who were leading an action to block the “AI Week” conferences (info here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122152089698258420&set=a.122124076598258420). On site we were able to disseminate our critical AI analyses, participate in the safe conduct of actions (the framework of our movement being legal and non-violent), and publicize them.
Indeed, we do not want this “awareness” (propaganda) to AI projects Who, in Rennes as everywhere else in the world:
- increase the dependence of humans on industrial infrastructure, where the priority should on the contrary be the local empowerment of populations;
- prioritize the needs of manufacturers (Thales, Airbus, Orange) and the army on the needs of humans and the planet;
- are taxed on the population without any democratic consultation, while it is our tax money that is used (20 million euros);
- are developing “smart networks” (technopolice in the making, such as the algorithmic video surveillance that we were able to test at the Olympics) and “autonomous robots” (think of the autonomous killer drones already used in Gaza) that will be used to enslave or repress humans here or elsewhere ;
- Have a monstrous ecological cost (manufacturing and powering servers, data centers, fiber optic cables, optical fiber cables, sensors, microchips, all this leading to its share of exploitation, extractivism and pollution) at a time that is already experiencing the sixth mass extinction and exponential global warming;
- claim international visibility in Rennes in terms of the development of these inhuman horrors (military robots, or at least algorithms necessary to improve them): the only visibility we want to have in Rennes is that of having been the first city to react to refuse to let the production of current and future ecocide and techno-genocides become trivialized!
We therefore call on all people who are genuinely interested in issues of ecology, democracy and human freedom To stand by our side then to denounce the costs and dangers associated with the development of AI.
If this century is to see the generalization of ecological disaster as mass surveillance, Let it not be said that the Rennes people passively collaborated on it! Let's organize ourselves to act against the techno-dystopian development of this deadly system while we still can!
Anti-Tech Resistance, a local group based in Rennes
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ATR is constantly welcoming and training new recruits determined to combat the technological system.