Tech Distopia brought to you by South Africans?
Andrew Feinstein: Tech Bros learned exactly the wrong lessons from Apartheid.
Transcript
1:27:58
And you know I spent 25 years investigating and researching fairly unpleasant people. These are the most odious egregious human beings I have ever looked into in my life. I mean two of them to give you examples. Peter Thiel who founded Palunteer which does a lot of this targeting software and various other things. Elon Musk of Tesla both spent formative years in what was then apartheid South Africa. One part of it the was in what is today Namibia but it was then still part of apartheid South Africa.
Their grandparents moved to those countries because they were the closest they could find to fascism post the Second World War because apartheid South Africa to go back to where we started was effectively ruled by people who had been jailed during the war because of their Nazi sympathies1 and involvement in pro-Nazi militias in southern Africa and German southwest Africa. And these people learned exactly the wrong lessons from apartheid.2 There are unrepentant white supremacists amongst many other things who simply believe that there are certain human beings who don’t deserve to live3 and they define them in all sorts of ways and these are the people who are not only driving AI because our governments are so totally inept and don’t even understand what AI really is. They these people themselves are drafting all of the regulation of AI. So they’re regulating themselves which means they’re not regulated at all and its impacts are terrifying not just in warfare but in terms of surveillance and repression4 at home as well.
QUESTIONS:
Do you agree with the speaker that tech policy is shaped by South Africans who learned the wrong lessons from apartheid? What evidence does he present?
If you were to critique this transcript, what are the top two points you would focus on? (see footnotes)
If you belonged to the group of South Africans being described, how would you reassure the speaker about the effects on AI surveillance and repression at home, or do you believe that is not their intent?
FOOTNOTES:
Who were this ruling class of jailed Nazi sympathizers?
What bad lessons did they learn from Apartheid?
Specifically who don’t they believe have the write to live?
Specify how you expect them to impact surveillance and repression at home.