I started working with AI back in 2015, back in my Consulting Analyst days in Hong Kong - before all the sexy hashtags. Back then, AGI was “50 years away,” and we were still optimistic about “The Future of Work.”
Now, nearly a decade on, we’re not just accelerating… we’re entering dangerous terrain. But something I don’t see discussed enough here in the LinkedIn echochambers?
👉🏽 Authoritarianism.
1️⃣ Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “Godfather of AI” quit Google in 2023 to speak freely about AI safety. He recently said “we’re talking about having huge increase in productivity... but it’s going to be the other way around... you get fertile ground for facism”. (*Insert countless recent examples*).
2️⃣ AI is already being deployed in warfare and surveillance - not hypothetically, but now. In places like Palestine, automated systems are used to track civilians and drive military decisions - technologies that are being exported to other regimes globally. (If this is new to you, I recommend “The Palestine Laboratory” by Antony Loewenstein).
💭 This isn’t just a policy issue. It’s a power issue. AI without ethics becomes automation of injustice.
———————————————————————————————————————————
I invest and advise founders in “AI for Liberation”
And yet... I still believe in AI, I use it everyday, not because it is inevitable... but because it is powerful. And power must be reclaimed.
🛠️ That’s why I invest & advise in what I call “AI for Liberation”:
🧠 Incredible tools like NX10.ME LTD, built by Aidyn Kussainov, using neurometrics to detect early signs of cognitive decline.
🍑 Amazing platforms like Linq, founded by Toby Bradshaw, protecting intimate content and combating revenge porn.
❤️🔥 AI is neither saviour nor villain. It is a mirror. Let’s make sure we like what it reflects.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Systemic questions we should be asking about AI:
Ownership - are we building tools owned by extractive monopolies, or public / cooperative / mission-locked structured?
Data rights - are people just raw material, or do they have agency, consent, and economic participation in the value created?
Labour - does AI concentrate wealth further, or reduce drudgery and expand human freedom?
Governance - are decisions about AI deployment made in boardrooms, or with democratic oversight?
Military crossover - is civilian tech quietly (or loudly) feeding warfare and surveillance supply chains?
Because without systemic redesign, “AI for good” just becomes a nice interface on top of the same of power structures.
AI doesn’t just automate tasks. It automates the value of the system(s) it’s embedded in.
———————————————————————————————————————————
📬 If you’re building, or investing, in AI for healing, justice, or futures we can be proud of - I want in. Let’s build systems worth scaling.