Imagining Beyond the Artificial Intelligentsia

This paper argues that an artificial intelligentsia is dragging us into an archaic future where intelligence is quantified, fixed, and ranked, and smartness is fetishized and codified in digital systems. At every turn, we hear echoes, in the rhetoric of the artificial intelligentsia, of a eugenic calculus: the weak must be sacrificed for the strong to survive. They promise to guide us into the Future™, positioning themselves as Guardians of the Galaxy, even as they help engineer the crises against which we must guard. But it is not enough to refute the legacies of eugenics animating the faux futures of the artificial intelligentsia. Instead, drawing on the work of organizations and initiatives that are "taking back tech" -- from Chicago to Palestine, Mexico to the Congo -- we must inaugurate legacies of solidarity that reflect our intrinsic interdependence as a people and a planet.