Why I disagree with Arundhati Roy’s views on AI

Arundhati Roy recently published a sweeping essay on artificial intelligence (AI) in Equator, arguing that the technology is drastically changing the way people work, write, and think as well as how power is distributed in society. In her accurate telling, the AI development industry is dominated by billionaires who appropriate human knowledge, exploit labour, and consume enormous amounts of natural resources while increasingly entrenching themselves within governments and militaries. Drawing parallels with colonialism, she portrays AI as the culmination of capitalism’s nihilistic drive towards extraction, accumulation, and control — and calls for resistance. But what is it that we should resist? Our ability to think, create, learn independently is worth protecting. Anyone who has been following the upheaval in mathematics will have discerned the multitude of voices, from undergraduate students to Fields Medallists, discussing what it will mean to be a mathematician in the near…