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Paris Marx Profile picture
Paris Marx
@parismarx
critic of tech futures | host @techwontsaveus | author, “road to nowhere”: https://t.co/5m15LZT2Yr | he/they | subscribe to my newsletter: https://t.co/0JqdZzcBJB
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Sep 17 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
For decades, internet politics was shaped by a cyberlibertarian perspective that obsessed about government while enabling the corporate dystopia we live in today.

If we want a better internet, we must abandon it and reclaim sovereignty over digital tech. disconnect.blog/reclaiming-sov… The arrest of Pavel Durov and suspension of Twitter/X in Brazil is a shot across the bow in a wider fight to rein in the harms that have come from the cyberlibertarian approach to the internet. But it will not end there.

disconnect.blog/reclaiming-sov…
The internet is at an inflection point. The platforms have cemented their power, generative AI and associated financial pressures are pushing companies to further degrade the online experience, and more than anything else, the notion that democratic governments should leave the internet alone is rapidly breaking down. Nothing shows that more than the recent arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France and the suspension of Twitter/X in Brazil. Make no mistake, governments’ stance on the internet has been changing for some time. Beyond the actions of French authorities and the Brazilian Supr...
Feb 9 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
The AI boom requires massive data centers that consume enormous amounts of water and energy.

Tech CEOs have plans for hundreds more, but activists are fighting back to protect their communities and force us to ask who benefits from Silicon Valley’s future.disconnect.blog/ai-is-fueling-… Everything we do online has a material footprint and people started becoming more aware of that during the crypto boom. But the AI hype of the past year is also far more resource-intensive than the applications it hopes to replace.

disconnect.blog/ai-is-fueling-…
The cryptocurrency hype of the past few years already started to introduce people to these problems. Despite producing little to no tangible benefits — unless you count letting rich people make money off speculation and scams — Bitcoin consumed more energy and computer parts than medium-sized countries and crypto miners were so voracious in their energy needs that they turned shuttered coal plants back on to process crypto transactions. Even after the crypto crash, Bitcoin still used more energy in 2023 than the previous year, but some miners found a new opportunity: powering the generative...
Jan 24 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Sam Altman’s vision for AI proliferation will require a lot more computation and the energy to power it.

He admitted it at Davos, but he said we shouldn’t worry: an energy breakthrough was coming, and in the meantime we could just geoengineer the planet. disconnect.blog/sam-altmans-se… Over the past year, Altman ensured we were focused on the future by promising incredible AI benefits or scaring us with terrifying futures. That ensured OpenAI could capture the attention of lawmakers to share AI regulation. But now his story is shifting.

disconnect.blog/sam-altmans-se…
By directing our gaze to the future, Altman and the AI industry effectively distracted a lot of people from the very real threats their technologies pose in the present. Instead of thinking about the harmful and discriminatory ways AI might be deployed in policing and social services, we were told to fear a fantasy scenario where computers exceed human-level intelligence then decide they want to enslave or kill us. That allowed Altman’s company OpenAI to influence regulatory efforts in the United States and Europe to ensure they wouldn’t hamper the company’s goals of rolling out their gener...
Dec 22, 2023 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
As Hyperloop One shuts down, we need to admit that the Hyperloop was never meant to be built.

Its goal was never to transform transportation for the masses, but to stop or delay high-speed rail from reaching North America. And sadly, it succeeded. disconnect.blog/p/the-hyperloo… It’s been ten years since Elon Musk first laid out the white paper, and it never really went anywhere. It was an idea that survived so long because of cheap money and is finally dying now that interest rates have made such useless projects untenable.

disconnect.blog/p/the-hyperloo…
Ten years after Elon Musk unveiled the white paper for the vacuum-tube transport system he dubbed the Hyperloop, it’s time to drive the final nail into its coffin. Earlier this year, Motley Fool was already reporting that things were tough in Hyperloop world with startups “dying a quiet death” as higher interest rates meant investors weren’t going for projects that were clearly never going to pay off. Hyperloop One, previously known as Virgin Hyperloop One, was struggling too. Last year it finally had to admit its passenger tube dreams were never going to be realized, so it tried to convin...
Sep 5, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Grimes was interviewed in Wired and she truly is unhinged. Elon has a real knack for making dumb people think they’re brilliant.

Apparently she’s writing a book called “Transhumanism for Babies.” 🫠 What's Book 2? Book 2 is a treatise, or manifesto-type thing. I've been writing civilization proposals. But I also want to include something else. I'm working on a bunch of baby books. I'm working on one right now called Transhumanism for Babies. It's about civilization building, for my kids. I can show you some of the stuff from it, let's see. [She shows me illustrations- they are fanciful, anime-style drawings with a streak of Henry Darger.] The chapters are Culture for Babies, Fashion for Babies, Art for Babies, Vehicles for Babies. Interplanetary Babies, City Planning for Babies. Al Rob... Another of her projects is a toy that uses ChatGPT to converse with people. Grimes says it’s to help mothers because life is hard for them. Forget social programs, maternity leave, child benefits; just give them some tech trash some idiot thinks sounds interesting. I take it you're riffing on Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Yeah, Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson kind of vibes. This is a baseline, entry-level educational project for me. I have a friend who I think I'm going to work with to develop something like a toy that can talk to you, like in Toy Story. You're describing a ChatGPT companion. Yeah, you're like, "Hey, what's the deal with volcanoes?" And it tells you, "This is what a volcano is." But it's more. It's got a personality. A pretty well-trained personality. Sounds like Chucky. I guess it could go awry. But in the short ter...
Aug 25, 2023 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
For years, the media was happy to build up Elon Musk and convince the public of his genius. But now it’s impossible to ignore who he really is.

The media failed us, and now they must reckon with how they covered him and the wider tech industry. disconnect.blog/p/the-medias-f… The media is constantly publishing stories about Musk’s most inane tweets for clicks, rarely giving the context that he almost never follows through on what he says. Those stories are a product of the media’s long informal partnership with Musk.

disconnect.blog/p/the-medias-f…
Almost any time Elon Musk fires off a random thought from his Twitter (sorry, X) account, you can be sure to find a number of media organizations publishing short write ups to get clicks from the swarms of people looking to see what the billionaire is up to next — or what bullshit he’s spouting this time. The publications may as well have ChatGPT set up to spit out a few paragraphs to keep the Musk content mill running. It doesn’t matter that Musk is known to make false statements, and might not even remember he made the declaration within weeks or even days. Those clickbait articles are t...
Jun 5, 2023 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Apple’s Vision Pro headset is a $3500 product designed to isolate you from your environment and strap a screen to your face so you’re constantly making money for tech companies.

It’s not a vision for the future of computing we should accept. disconnect.blog/p/apples-visio… Vision Pro is designed be an “augmented reality” headset so you’re not completely closed off from the environment around you, but it still feels incredibly isolating despite Apple’s attempts to make it look sleek and futuristic.

disconnect.blog/p/apples-visio… After months of rumor and s...
May 17, 2023 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Elon Musk is man, but he’s also a character created by the media to represent the tech industry. Fawning press coverage helped him gain his wealth and power.

Now he’s now using it to spread far-right conspiracy theories. It’s time for some accountability. disconnect.blog/p/elon-musk-th… This piece is a response to a recent interview Musk gave to CNBC where he was very clear that he doesn’t care about the possible repercussions of sharing his extreme right-wing views, likely because he knows he rarely faces any consequences.
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Elon Musk has completely lost the plot. You can tell he’s seething that the interviewer even dared to ask about the fascist, anti-Semitic things he’s been tweeting. He’s not only surrounded by yes men, but has built a far-right info bubble he wants to pull more people into. The part where he quotes “Princess Bride” is honestly chilling. This is the consequence of the media hyping him up for the past two decades and making him believe he’s the genius they presented him as, then the government going along with it and never holding him to account.
May 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Google’s vision for the future of search shows how generative AI is all about increasing corporate power.

Instead of sending you to different websites, Google has scraped the open web to generate plagiarized answers to keep you looking at ads on Google. disconnect.blog/p/google-wants… At Google I/O, the company showed off how search will change. Instead of entering your prompt and showing you “10 blue links,” it will push those links off the screen and replace your field of view with AI-generated answers.

disconnect.blog/p/google-wants… During the demo, the compan...
Apr 21, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Silicon Valley’s elite made their billions through luck, not genius. Now, to protect their privilege, they want us to believe they’re inherently superior.

For Disconnect, I explain they’re bringing eugenics back in a self-serving quest to remain on top. disconnect.blog/p/why-silicon-… Earlier this week, Elon Musk appeared on Fox News to explicitly argue against birth control and abortion access, saying it was leading to lower birth rates that threatened “civilization.” It felt necessary to connect that to a larger project.
Apr 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
what fucking sucks is that the media’s going to have a hawkish field day with this and never actually ask whether we need to hit an arbitrary 2% spending target in the first place (which, to be clear, we don’t) since the ukraine war the canadian media’s been even more hawkish and friendly to the military than usual, suggesting we’re underspending on the military when trudeau’s been making massive investments and that not being in aukus was a snub when we don’t need nuclear subs!
Apr 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
this is increasing the vibe i’m getting from twitter, elon being rorschach of course like how far does elon have to go in alienating the media and banning journalists for us all to just abandon twitter once and for all? the problem seems to be the lack of alternative
Apr 19, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It’s so irresponsible for 60 Minutes to give its platform over to Google’s PR machine and its effort to mislead the public as to what generative AI and chatbots are actually doing, especially at a moment when there’s so much hype and interest in these technologies. These companies have an incentive to make it seem like ChatGPT, Bard, etc. are doing a lot more than they’re actually doing. Pichai, Altman, and others are trying to draw comparisons between their tech and human minds when that’s absolutely the wrong way to understand them.
Apr 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Substack says it can’t moderate hate speech because it supports free speech. Yet the framing of free speech it uses was developed by the right precisely to protect and spread their bigoted views.

In Disconnect, I explain that could be a problem for Notes. disconnect.blog/p/substack-is-… The piece is a response to a clip that went viral last week, showing not only how poorly Substack is able to articulate its approach to content moderation, but how it doesn’t seem to have thought through how that will apply to Notes.
Feb 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Uber has been cutting its losses by raising prices and taking more from drivers, explains Hubert Horan.

In 2022, Uber increased “its revenue per trip by 52% ($4.17 vs $2.74 in 2021) while forcing drivers to accept less revenue per trip (down 5% from $11.46 in 2021 to $10.93).” Graph titled "Uber revenue per trip rose 52% in 2022, w “Drivers were only getting 72% of each customer dollar in 2022 while Uber’s share had increased to 28%. Drivers would have received $6.5 billion more in 2022 if fares were still being split on the pre-pandemic 78%/22% basis.” nakedcapitalism.com/2023/02/hubert…
Feb 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Now that the crypto hype is over, Kevin is back for the next cycle, dutifully performing his role. After taking the booster route last week, this week he warns that the AI chatbots might just be *too* powerful for us lowly humans — another gift to Microsoft and OpenAI. If you’re up on your AI history, it’s impossible not to get get ELIZA vibes from this piece. Roose is doing exactly what Joseph Weizenbaum warned about decades ago: projecting his fantasies onto the program, and deepening his own commitment to them in the process.
Feb 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The tech industry promised us it was going to fix our transport system. Over a decade later, it hasn’t just not delivered, it’s added a ton of digital tech to cars that make drivers even more distracted.

I dig into why this happened and its consequences. disconnect.blog/p/tech-was-sup… I place a lot of the blame for this on Tesla. Elon Musk set the template for what the electric car of the future should look like and the tech aesthetics it should emulate, and other carmakers followed. But that’s distorted our idea of what an EV should be. I place the blame for this ...
Feb 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Before Tesla, Elon Musk launched a company called X.com that he hoped would upend the banking system. It didn’t, but he never gave up on the idea.

Now he’s trying to recreate that vision at Twitter. I explain why it’s doomed to fail. disconnect.blog/p/elon-musk-wa… In November, Musk outlined his bigger plan for Twitter, and it quickly became clear how much of it was pulled directly out of the X.com playbook, without considering how the industry has changed in the past 20 years and why grafting it onto Twitter won’t work. In a Q&A on Twitter Spaces ...
Jan 25, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I think people like former health minister Jane Philpott who go on the news and say we already have private delivery in Canadian healthcare to assuage concerns that’s being expanded are doing us all a disservice, especially when polls show Canadians don’t support it. Yes, private delivery is more common, in part because govs went on an outsourcing campaign in recent decades (not always with the best results). Plus, even though some provinces are already doing private surgeries, the evidence in those cases shows it didn’t reduce wait times.
Jan 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Starlink kicked off a race that will have severe consequences. This article is preoccupied with China’s space satellite efforts being controlled by the state, but the real issue is more basic: that we’re launching many thousands of satellites into orbit. restofworld.org/2023/china-sta… I’d prefer virtually anything happening in space not to be controlled by a private company, and we can see why: Elon Musk and the space billionaires’ efforts are not driven by any real consideration of public good or scientific progress, but are still pushing others to follow.